She could save him, perhaps. So far as she
could see, the fire was not yet crossing the road in front. The Bishop
would still be on the road. She was sure of that. Again she asked Brom
Bones for his brave best.

* * * * *

The Bishop was beginning to think that he might yet get through to
French Village. His watch told him that it was six o'clock. Soon the
sun would be going down, though in the impenetrable tenting of white
smoke that had spread high over all the air there was nothing to show
that a sun had ever shone upon the earth. With the going down of the
sun the wind, too, would probably die away. The fire had not yet come
to the road in front of him. If the wind fell the fire would advance
but slowly, and would hardly spread to the north at all.

He was not discrediting the enemy in front. He had seen the mighty
sweep of the fire and he knew that it would need but the slightest
shift of the wind to send a wall of flame down upon him from which he
would have to run for his life. He did not, of course, know that the
fire had already crossed the road behind him. But even if he had, he
would probably have kept on trusting to the chance of getting through
somehow.

He was ascending another long slope of country where the road ran
straight up to the east. The fire was already to the right of him,
sweeping along in a steady march to the west. It was spreading
steadily northward, toward the road; but he was hoping that the hill
before him had served to hold it back, that it had not really crossed
the road at any point, and that when he came to the top of this hill
he would be able to see the road clear before him up to French
Village. He was wearied to the point of exhaustion, and his nervous
horse fought him constantly in an effort to bolt from the road and
make off to the north. But, he argued, he had suffered nothing so far
from the fire; and there was no real reason to be discouraged.

Then he came to the top of the hill.

He rubbed his eyes, as he had done a long, long time before on that
same day. Five hundred yards before him as he looked down a slight
slope, a belt of pine trees was burning high to the sky. The road ran
straight through that. Behind and beyond the belt of pines he could
see the whole country banked in terraces of flame. There was no road.
This hill had divided the wind, and thus, temporarily, it had divided
the fire. Already the fire had run away t