f the sawdust heap was a glowing
furnace.

Nan would not run away and Tom did not see her. As he came plunging
back to the stalled wagon, suddenly his foot slumped into the yielding
sawdust and he fell upon his face. He cried out with surprise or pain.
Nan, horrified, saw the flames and smoke shooting out of the hole into
which her cousin had stepped. For the moment the girl felt as if her
heart had stopped beating.

"Oh, Tom! Oh, Tom!" she shrieked, and sprang toward him.

Tom was struggling to get up. His right leg had gone into the yielding
mass up to his hip, and despite his struggles he could not get it out.
A long yellow flame shot out of the hole and almost licked his face. It,
indeed, scorched his hair on one side of his head.

But Nan did not scream again. She needed her breath, all that she could
get, for a more practical purpose. Her cousin waved her back feebly, and
tried to tell her to avoid the fire.

Nan rushed in, got behind him, and seized her cousin under the arms. To
lift him seemed a giant's task; but nevertheless she tried.

Chapter XXVII. OLD TOBY IN TROUBLE

The squealing and plunging of the horses, the rattling of their chains,
the shrieking of the wind, the reverberating cracks of thunder made
a deafening chorus in Nan's ears. She could scarcely hear what the
imperiled Tom shouted to her. Finally she got it:

"Not that way! Pull sideways!"

He beat his hands impotently upon the crust of sawdust to the left. Nan
tugged that way. Tom pulled, too, heaving his great body upward, and
scratching and scrambling along the sawdust with fingers spread like
claws. His right leg came out of the hole, and just then the rain
descended torrentially again.

The flames from this opening in the roof of the furnace were beaten
down. Tom got to his feet, shaking and panting. He hobbled painfully
when he walked.

But in a moment he seized upon the pole he had dropped and made for the
smoking timber cart. The terrified horses tried again and again to break
away; but the chain harnesses were too strong; nor did the mired wheel
budge.

"Oh, Tom! Oh, Tom!" begged Nan. "Let us make the poor horses free, and
run ourselves."

"And lose my wagon?" returned her cousin, grimly. "Not much!"

The rain, which continued to descend with tropical violence, almost beat
Nan to the ground; but Tom Sherwood worked furiously.

He placed the butt of the lever he had cut under the hub of the great
wheel. There was