hem tore at the
earth with picks and hoes. It was impossible to believe that such
ant-labors could avail, but already, near the road, the fire had burnt
itself out, baffled by its microscopic assailants. As far as the girls
could see into the charred underbrush, a narrow, clean line of freshly
upturned earth marked where the fiercest of all the elements had
been vanquished by the humblest of all the tools of men. Bewildered,
Sylvia's eyes shifted from the toiling men to the distance, across the
blackened desolation near them, to where the fire still tossed its
wicked crest of flames defiantly into the forest. She heard, but
she did not believe the words of the men in the car, who cried out
expertly as they ran forward, "Oh, the worst's over. They're shutting
down on it." How could the worst be over, when there was still that
whirling horror of flame and smoke beyond them?

Just after the men had gone, exultant, relieved, the girls turned
their heads to the other side of the road, and there, very silent,
very secret and venomous, leaped and glittered a little ring of
flames. An hour before, it would have looked a pretty, harmless sight
to the two who now sat, stricken by horror into a momentary frozen
stillness. The flames licked at the dry leaves and playfully sprang up
into a clump of tall dry grass. The fire was running swiftly towards a
bunch of dead alders standing at the edge of the forest. Before it had
spread an inch further, the girls were upon it, screaming for help,
screaming as people in civilization seldom scream, with all their
lungs. With uplifted skirts they stamped and trod out, under swift and
fearless feet, the sinister, silent, yellow tongues. They snatched
branches of green leaves and beat fiercely at the enemy. It had been
so small a spot compared to the great desolation across the road, they
stamped out the flames so easily, that the girls expected with every
breath to see the last of it. To see it escape them, to see it
suddenly flare up where it had been dead, to see it appear behind
them while they were still fighting it in front, was like being in a
nightmare when effort is impossible. The ring widened with appalling,
with unbelievable rapidity. Sylvia could not think it possible that
anything outside a dream could have such devouring swiftness. She trod
and snatched and stamped and screamed, and wondered if she were indeed
awake....

Yet in an instant their screams had been heard, three or f