ing was of terror. But then she dropped her
arm and looked, and looked again at the glorious, awful sight which
was to furnish her with nightmares for months to come.

The fire was roaring down one side of the road towards them, and away
to the right was eating its furious, sulphurous way into the heart of
the forest. They stopped a hundred feet short, but the blare of heat
struck on their faces like a blow. Through the dense masses of smoke,
terrifying glimpses of fierce, clean flame; a resinous dead stump
burning like a torch; a great tree standing helpless like a martyr at
the stake, suddenly transformed into a frenzied pillar of fire....
Along the front of this whirlpool of flame toiled, with despairing
fury, four lean, powerful men. As they raised their blackened,
desperate faces and saw the car there, actually there, incredibly
there, black with its load of men, they gave a deep-throated shout of
relief, though they did not for an instant stop the frantic plying of
their picks and hoes. The nine men sprang out, their implements in
their hands, and dispersed along the fighting-line.

Molly backed the car around, the rear wheels churning up the sand, and
plunged down the hill into the smoke. Through the choking fumes of
this, Sylvia shouted at her, "Molly! Molly! You're _great_!" She felt
that she would always hear ringing in her ears that thrilling, hoarse
shout of relief.

Molly shouted in answer, "I could scream, I'm so happy!" And as they
plunged madly down the mountain road, she said: "Oh, Sylvia, you don't
know--I never was any use before--never once--never! I got the first
load of help there! How they shouted!"

At the junction of the side-road with the highway, a car was
discharging a load of men with rakes and picks. "_I_ took my car up!"
screamed Molly, leaning from the steering wheel but not slackening
speed as she tore past them.

The driver of the other car, a young man with the face of a fighting
Celt, flushed at the challenge and, motioning the men back into the
car, started up the sandy hill. Molly laughed aloud. "I never was so
happy in my life!" she said again.

Both girls had forgotten the existence of Felix Morrison.

They passed cars now, many of them, streaming south at breakneck
speed, full to overflowing with unsmiling men in working clothes,
bristling with long-handled implements. But as they fled down the
street to the factory they saw, waiting still, some twenty or more men
in ove