Before dawn Alice awoke in a fit of coughing. Her bedroom was a blank. The open window overlooking the torrent had disappeared. She sat up choking—staring with wide open, stinging eyes, into an acrid haze. She felt for the matches beside her bed and struck one. Its flame burned saffron for an instant and went out as if it had been plunged into a bottle. At this instant she would have shrieked with fright had not the sound of a man leaping up the stairs leading to her room reached her ears. Then her door crashed in clear of its hinges. She remained sitting bolt upright in bed, too terrified to move. A pair of sinewy arms reached out for her, groping in the strangling haze.

"Who\'s there?" she gasped.

"Keep your mouth shut!" commanded a voice close to her ear; then the arms lifted her bodily out of bed and swung her clear of the floor; a glimmering tongue of flame licking up the stairway revealed the features of the man in whose arms she struggled.

"Holcomb!" she started to cry out, but the acrid fog closed her throat.

"Keep your mouth shut—do you hear!" he muttered in her ear; "we\'ll be out of this in a minute." He lunged with her headlong over the smashed door and reached the top of the flight, feeling for the first step cautiously with his foot. She screamed this time, beating his face with her clenched hands.

"Keep your mouth shut," he mumbled; "you\'ll strangle."

Her arm became limp. "Where\'s Sam?—where\'s—" she pleaded feebly. Then a dull roar rang in her ears; she lay unconscious, a dead weight in his arms.

Holcomb began to stagger on the bottom step, reeling like a drunkard; again he proceeded, stumbling on through the passageway leading to Blakeman\'s pantry. The ceiling of varnished yellow pine above him rained down sputtering drippings of flame; they burned his neck, his hands, his hair. He dashed on through a pantry of sizzling blisters, past a glowing wall in a hot fog of yellow smoke, one burned hand covering her mouth. Then he turned sharply to the left, striking his shoulder heavily against a corner beam!

The blow made him conscious of a man crawling on his hands and knees toward them. The man rose—groped blindly like an animal driven to bay and rushed straight at him.

"Give her to me, Billy," he hissed in his ear, "Quick—save yourself!"
Then a burned fist struck straight out and missed—struck again and
Holcomb fell senseless.

With the quickness of a cat the man caught the woman in his arms, groped his way to the open, laid her prostrate body on the charred grass—sprang back into the swirl and choke of the deadly gas and smoke, and the next instant reappeared with the stunned and half-conscious Holcomb on his back, his hair singed, his clothes on fire; then he tripped and fell headlong.

The shock brought Holcomb to his senses. The man was stooping over him, his ear close to his cheek.

"It\'s me, Billy—Bob Dinsmore. I didn\'t want to hurt ye, but I see ye couldn\'t manage her and yerself and thar warn\'t no other way; ye\'d both been smothered. She\'s all right—they\'re tendin\' to her."

Holcomb clutched at the hide-out\'s sleeve.

"No—I dassent stay—nobody seen me but you"—and he was swallowed up in the shadows.

Two men and a girl now swept past the half-dazed man, halted for a moment, and with a cry of joy from the girl, aided by the trapper and the Clown, dragged him clear of the rain of burning embers.

When Holcomb regained consciousness Margaret was bending over him.

"No, Billy—don\'t move, dear. Please, oh, please—" and she kissed his cheek—two soft little kisses—the kisses he had remembered in his dream. Then she left him.

He forgot the pain racking his arm; his brain grew clearer. He reached his feet, lurching unsteadily toward Thayor, who sat by Alice who was sobbing hysterically. The banker put out his left hand and covered Holcomb\'s burned fist tenderly, his gaze still fixed on the leaping flames, but neither spoke. The situation was too intense for words.

* * * * *

During this utter destruction not a man among the gang employed had put in an appearance. This fact, in itself, was alarming; nor had one outside of these come to the rescue. There was no doubt now that the general desertion had been as premeditated as the fire. Who were the prime movers of this dastardly revenge remained still a mystery.

The housekeeper, the cook, the two maids and the valet—all but Blakeman and Annette, who had awakened at the first alarm—had made their escape in terror down the macadam road; they were just in time; this road—the only open exit leading out from Big Shanty being now barred by flame. Worse than all, this barrier of fire had widened so that now two roaring wings of burning timber extended from the very edge of the torrent in a vast semi-circle of flame—sinister and impenetrable—across the compound and far into the woods on the other side. It was as if the last life boat had been launched from a sinking ship, leaving those who were too late to die!

Their only way out now lay through that trackless wilderness behind them.

Here was a situation far graver than the burning of Big Shanty. The gray-haired man with his back against the hemlock realized this. He still stood grimly watching the fire—his ashen lips shut tight.

Big Shanty burned briskly; it crackled, blazed, puffed and roared, driven by a northeast wind. The northeast wind was in league with the flames. It was on hand; it had begun with the stables—it had now nearly finished with the main camp. The surrounding buildings—the innumerable shelters for innumerable things—made a poor display; they went too quickly. It was the varnish in the main camp that went mad in flame—rioting flames that swept joyously now in oily waves. The northeast wind spared nothing. It seemed to howl to the flames: "Keep on—I\'ll back you—I\'m game until daylight."

Walls, partitions, gables, roofs, ridge-poles, stuff in closets, furniture, luxuries, rugs, pictures, floors, clapboards, jewels, shingles, a grand piano, guns, gowns, books, money—in twenty minutes became a glowing hole in the ground. The destruction was complete; the heel of the northeast wind had stamped it flat. Big Shanty camp had vanished.

The man braced against the trunk of the hemlock saw all this with the old, weary, haggard look in his eyes, yet not a syllable escaped his lips. He saw the northeast wind drive its friend the fire straight into the thick timber of the wilderness; trees crackled, flared and gave up; others ahead of them bent, burst and went under—the northeast wind had doomed them rods ahead; it swept—it annihilated—without quarter. It scattered the half-clad group of refugees to shelter across Big Shanty Brook upon whose opposite shore, as yet untouched, they re-gathered to watch—out of the way.

It began to drizzle—a drizzle of no importance, but it cooled the faces of those who were ill.

In an hour Big Shanty Brook had sacrificed three miles of its shore in self-defence. Its bend above the nodding cedars—where Thayor had killed his deer—had succeeded in turning the course of the fire. The shore upon which the refugees stood was untouched. The brook in the chaos of running fire had saved their lives.

Still the fire roared on and although the torrent kept it at bay it went wild in the bordering wilderness. The burned camp was now a forgotten incident in this devilish course of flame. The northeast wind had not failed. The woods bec............