er my rafts of timber. I've done had a lavish of this town."

"May we go too?" inquired Halloway. "We hain't got no roof over us
neither--now."

"I reckon ye kin all come save only----" she paused a moment and added
in hardened voice, "save only ther man thet sought ter slay my paw."

Bud's head drooped. He was still sweating, for when he left the sill,
the place had been a furnace, but he said nothing, and instantly
Alexander wheeled again and spoke impulsively.

"I've got ter crave yore pardon, Bud," she exclaimed. "Paw said he
didn't hold no grudge ergin you nohow. An' I reckon ye've done sought
right slavish ter make amends ternight."

CHAPTER VII

From down there at the boom as the blackest hours of the night passed,
Halloway and Brent sat rubber-coated on the raft watching the inflamed
redness that was wiping out all that end of the village. The
age-seasoned frame houses there huddled close enough for the hot
contagion to sweep them with typhoon speed and they went up in spurts
like pitch barrels. The wind was high enough to romp ruthlessly with
spark and blaze, until even the effort at fire-fighting had been
abandoned. Happily the bluster had settled to a constant gale out of
the south-west and the fire-tide rolled with it to the edge and not the
core of the town and when it lapped at the reeking woods it hissed out
in defeat.

Alexander had withdrawn to her improvised shack and wrapped herself in
her blanket. Brent gazed with a sort of hypnotized intentness on the
wildness of the picture before him--an orgy of fire, wind and water.
Through the wet mountains the wind shrieked and buffetted until ancient
trees, made brittle by long freezing, went down. At his back, beyond
the boom, sounded the dirge of the swollen waters running out. That
was like the wail of a maniac exhausted by his ravings. The stage was
dropping as rapidly as it had risen. Ahead, tossing a mane of smoke
and a spume of spark, reveled the demoniac spirit of Fire. Brent
shuddered but Halloway struck a match just then for his dead pipe under
the protection of his coat lapel and in the brief flare Brent saw that
his eyes were agleam, feral and animal-like, and that his lips were
wolfishly drawn back from his teeth.

"This is elemental!" Halloway burst out suddenly. "I glory in it.
I've been sitting here drunker than any moonshine guzzler back there at
that tavern to-night. Drunk on the wild wine of the elements--drunk