e as she ran back and forth with her little peeping
birdlings. They did not even bother about Thumbietot. In their hands
they held great, charred pine branches which had dropped into the brook,
and it appeared as if they intended to challenge the fire with these
weapons. There were not many men, and it was strange to see them stand
there, ready to fight, when all other living creatures were fleeing.

As the fire came roaring and rushing down the slope with its intolerable
heat and suffocating smoke, ready to hurl itself over brook and
leaf-tree wall in order to reach the opposite shore without having to
pause, the people drew back at first as if unable to withstand it; but
they did not flee far before they turned back.

The conflagration raged with savage force, sparks poured like a rain of
fire over the leaf trees, and long tongues of flame shot hissingly out
from the smoke, as if the forest on the other side were sucking them in.

But the leaf-tree wall was an obstruction behind which the men worked.
When the ground began to smoulder they brought water in their vessels
and dampened it. When a tree became wreathed in smoke they felled it at
once, threw it down and put out the flames. Where the fire crept along
the heather, they beat it with the wet pine branches and smothered it.

The smoke was so dense that it enveloped everything. One could not
possibly see how the battle was going, but it was easy enough to
understand that it was a hard fight, and that several times the fire
came near penetrating farther.

But think! After a while the loud roar of the flames decreased, and the
smoke cleared. By that time the leaf trees had lost all their foliage,
the ground under them was charred, the faces of the men were blackened
by smoke and dripping with sweat; but the forest fire was conquered. It
had ceased to flame up. Soft white smoke crept along the ground, and
from it peeped out a lot of black stumps. This was all there was left of
the beautiful forest!

The boy scrambled up on a rock, so that he might see how the fire had
been quenched. But now that the forest was saved, his peril began. The
owl and the hawk simultaneously turned their eyes toward him. Just then
he heard a familiar voice calling to him.

Gorgo, the golden eagle, came sweeping through the forest, and soon the
boy was soaring among the clouds--rescued from every peril.

WESTBOTTOM AND LAPLAND

THE FIVE SCOUTS

Once, at Skansen, the boy had s