tracted air, while he
kept his eye riveted on the changing, and certainly beautiful tints,
that were garnishing the vault of Heaven. "Rising of the sun! I like not
such risings of the sun. Ah's me! the imps have circumvented us with a
vengeance. The prairie is on fire!"

"God in Heaven protect us!" cried Middleton, catching Inez to his bosom,
under the instant impression of the imminence of their danger. "There is
no time to lose, old man; each instant is a day; let us fly."

"Whither?" demanded the trapper, motioning him, with calmness and
dignity, to arrest his steps. "In this wilderness of grass and reeds,
you are like a vessel in the broad lakes without a compass. A single
step on the wrong course might prove the destruction of us all. It is
seldom danger is so pressing, that there is not time enough for reason
to do its work, young officer; therefore let us await its biddings."

"For my own part," said Paul Hover, looking about him with no equivocal
expression of concern, "I acknowledge, that should this dry bed of weeds
get fairly in a flame, a bee would have to make a flight higher than
common to prevent his wings from scorching. Therefore, old trapper, I
agree with the captain, and say mount and run."

"Ye are wrong--ye are wrong; man is not a beast to follow the gift of
instinct, and to snuff up his knowledge by a taint in the air, or a
rumbling in the sound; but he must see and reason, and then conclude.
So follow me a little to the left, where there is a rise in the ground,
whence we may make our reconnoitrings."

The old man waved his hand with authority, and led the way without
further parlance to the spot he had indicated, followed by the whole of
his alarmed companions. An eye less practised than that of the trapper
might have failed in discovering the gentle elevation to which he
alluded, and which looked on the surface of the meadow like a growth
a little taller than common. When they reached the place, however, the
stinted grass itself announced the absence of that moisture, which had
fed the rank weeds of most of the plain, and furnished a clue to the
evidence by which he had judged of the formation of the ground hidden
beneath. Here a few minutes were lost in breaking down the tops of
the surrounding herbage, which, notwithstanding the advantage of their
position, rose even above the heads of Middleton and Paul, and in
obtaining a look-out that might command a view of the surrounding sea of
fire