them, not
for ours at all."

"What will we do with these shovels when we get them?" asked Tom Binns,
who had distributed his load so that each of the others had some
shovels to carry. They made a heavy load, even so, and Tom couldn't
have carried them all for more than a few steps without dropping from
their weight.

"I guess Mr. Durland intends to dig a trench, and then start a back
fire," said Crawford. "You see, the wind is so strong that if we
started a back fire without precaution like that it would be simply
hastening destruction of the property we are trying to save, and it
would be better not to interfere at all than to do that. With the
trench, you see, the fire we start will be quickly stopped, and the
other fire won't have anything to feed on when it once reaches the part
that we've burned over."

Crawford had guessed aright the reason for getting the shovels, for
Durland, as soon as the three Scouts reached the stream with their
precious burden of shovels, picked out the strongest Scouts and set
them to work digging the trench. He took a shovel himself, and set the
best of examples by the way he made the dirt fly.

They were working on a sort of a ridge. On each side there was a
natural barrier to the advance of the fire, fortunately, in the form of
rock quarries, where there was absolutely nothing that the fire could
feed on. Therefore, if it hadn't been checked, it would have swept
over the place where they had dug their trench, as through the mouth of
a funnel, and mushroomed out again beyond the quarries.

The trench was dug in an amazingly short time. It was rough work, but
effective, the ditch, about two feet deep and seven or eight feet wide,
extending for nearly two hundred feet. On the side of this furthest
from the fire Durland now lined up the Scouts, each armed with a branch
covered with leaves at one end.

"I'm going to start a back fire now," he said. "I don't think it will
be big enough to leap the trench, but to make sure, you will all stay
lined up on your side of the ditch, and beat out every spark that comes
across and catches the dry grass on your side. Then we'll be
absolutely safe."

He and Crawford, skilled in the ways of the woods, soon had the brush
on the other side burning. The rate at which the little fire they set
spread, showed beyond a doubt how quickly the great fire that was
sweeping down the mountain would have crossed the supposed clearing.

"Gee, see