the chimney-top without sucking forth a spark large enough to
ignite the hay. Hence Bill's warning. He had spoken of it before.

Hazel washed up her breakfast dishes, and set the cabin in order
according to her housewifely instincts. Then she curled up in the
chair which Bill had painstakingly constructed for her especial comfort
with only ax and knife for tools. She was working up a pair of
moccasins after an Indian pattern, and she grew wholly absorbed in the
task, drawing stitch after stitch of sinew strongly and neatly into
place. The hours flicked past in unseemly haste, so completely was she
engrossed. When at length the soreness of her fingers warned her that
she had been at work a long time, she looked at her watch.

"Goodness me! Bill's due home any time, and I haven't a thing ready to
eat," she exclaimed. "And here's my fire nearly out."

She piled on wood, and stirring the coals under it, fanned them with
her husband's old felt hat, forgetful of sparks or aught but that she
should be cooking against his hungry arrival. Outside, the wind blew
lustily, driving the loose snow across the open in long, wavering
ribbons. But she had forgotten that it was in the dangerous quarter,
and she did not recall that important fact even when she sat down again
to watch her moose steaks broil on the glowing coals raked apart from
the leaping blaze. The flames licked into the throat of the chimney
with the purr of a giant cat.

No sixth sense warned her of impending calamity. It burst upon her
with startling abruptness only when she opened the door to throw out
some scraps of discarded meat, for the blaze of the burning stack shot
thirty feet in the air, and the smoke rolled across the meadow in a
sooty manner.

Bareheaded, in a thin pair of moccasins, without coat or mittens to
fend her from the lance-toothed frost. Hazel ran to the stable. She
could get the horses out, perhaps, before the log walls became their
crematory. But Bill, coming in from his traps, reached the stable
first, and there was nothing for her to do but stand and watch with a
sickening self-reproach. He untied and clubbed the reluctant horses
outside. Already the stable end against the hay was shooting up
tongues of flame. As the blaze lapped swiftly over the roof and ate
into the walls, the horses struggled through the deep drift, lunging
desperately to gain a few yards, then turned to stand with ears pricked
up at the strange sigh