trunks of near trees stood like the bars of a stupendous cage,
through which she looked at the raging demons beyond. Burning limbs
fell, shooting through the air with trails of flame. Every tree was a
pillar of fire. Here a bough, still untouched, hung, dark and impassive,
against the lurid, surging chaos. Then the whirlwind of heated air
struck it, and you could see it writhe and twist, until its darkness
burst into flame. There stood what was late a lordly maple, but
now,--trunk, and limb, and branch,--a tree of living coal. And down
under this gulf of fire flowed the brook, into which showers of sparks
fell hissing, while over all, fearfully illumined clouds of smoke and
cinders and leaves went rolling up into the sky.

Virginia approached near enough to be impressed with the dreadful
certainty that there was no outlet whatever, for any mortal foot, in
that direction. Tortured by the heat, and pursued by lighted twigs, that
fell like fiery darts around her, she fled back into the gorge.

The conflagration was still spreading rapidly. The timber along both
sides of the gorge, at its opening, began to burn upwards towards the
summits of the cliffs. Soon the very spot where she had slept, and where
she now paused once more in her terrible perplexity and fear, would be
an abyss of flame.

Again she took to flight, hasting along the edge of the stream, up into
the heart of the gorge. Over roots of trees, over old decaying trunks,
over barricades of dead limbs brought down by freshets and left lodged,
she climbed, she sprang, she ran. All too brightly her way was lighted
now. A ghastly yellow radiance was on every object. The waters sparkled
and gleamed as they poured over the dark brown stones. Every slender,
delicate fern, every poor little startled wild flower nestled in cool,
dim nooks, was glaringly revealed. Little the frightened girl heeded
these darlings of the forest now.

All the way she looked eagerly for some slant or cleft in the mountain
walls where she might hope to ascend. Here, over the accumulated soil of
centuries, fastened by interwoven roots to the base of the cliff, she
might have climbed a dozen feet or more. Yonder, by the aid of shrubs
and boughs, she might have drawn herself up a few feet farther. But,
wherever her eye ranged along the ledges above, she beheld them
dizzy-steep and unscalable. And so she kept on until even the way before
her was closed up.

On the brink of a rock-rimmed, flas