towered the trees.
There was a tremendous snapping and crackling and roaring. It was the
most monumental work we had ever effected with our hands, and we were
proud of it. We, too, were Fire-Men, we thought, as we danced there,
white gnomes in the conflagration.

The dried grass and underbrush caught fire, but we did not notice it.
Suddenly a great tree on the edge of the open space burst into flames.

We looked at it with startled eyes. The heat of it drove us back.
Another tree caught, and another, and then half a dozen. We were
frightened. The monster had broken loose. We crouched down in fear,
while the fire ate around the circle and hemmed us in. Into Lop-Ear's
eyes came the plaintive look that always accompanied incomprehension,
and I know that in my eyes must have been the same look. We huddled,
with our arms around each other, until the heat began to reach us and
the odor of burning hair was in our nostrils. Then we made a dash of it,
and fled away westward through the forest, looking back and laughing as
we ran.

By the middle of the day we came to a neck of land, made, as we
afterward discovered, by a great curve of the river that almost
completed a circle. Right across the neck lay bunched several low and
partly wooded hills. Over these we climbed, looking backward at the
forest which had become a sea of flame that swept eastward before a
rising wind. We continued to the west, following the river bank, and
before we knew it we were in the midst of the abiding-place of the Fire
People.

This abiding-place was a splendid strategic selection. It was a
peninsula, protected on three sides by the curving river. On only
one side was it accessible by land. This was the narrow neck of the
peninsula, and here the several low hills were a natural obstacle.
Practically isolated from the rest of the world, the Fire People must
have here lived and prospered for a long time. In fact, I think it was
their prosperity that was responsible for the subsequent migration that
worked such calamity upon the Folk. The Fire People must have increased
in numbers until they pressed uncomfortably against the bounds of their
habitat. They were expanding, and in the course of their expanding they
drove the Folk before them, and settled down themselves in the caves and
occupied the territory that we had occupied.

But Lop-Ear and I little dreamed of all this when we found ourselves in
the Fire People's stronghold. We had but one idea,