"It war!" said Collinson gravely.

Perhaps it was something in Collinson's manner, or his own
preoccupation, but he did not pursue the subject, and the conversation
lagged. They were nearing, too, the outer edge of the present
conflagration, and the smoke, lying low in the unburnt woods, or
creeping like an actual exhalation of the soil, blinded them so that at
times they lost the trail completely. At other times, from the intense
heat, it seemed as if they were momentarily impinging upon the burning
area, or were being caught in a closing circle. It was remarkable that
with his sudden accession of fortune Key seemed to lose his usual frank
and careless fearlessness, and impatiently questioned his companion's
woodcraft. There were intervals when he regretted his haste to reach
Skinner's by this shorter cut, and began to bitterly attribute it to
his desire to serve Collinson. Ah, yes! it would be fine indeed, if
just as he were about to clutch the prize he should be sacrificed
through the ignorance and stupidity of this heavy-handed moralist at
his side! But it was not until, through that moralist's guidance, they
climbed a steep acclivity to a second ridge, and were comparatively
safe, that he began to feel ashamed of his surly silence or surlier
interruptions. And Collinson, either through his unconquerable
patience, or possibly in a fit of his usual uxorious abstraction,
appeared to take no notice of it.

A sloping table-land of weather-beaten boulders now effectually
separated them from the fire on the lower ridge. They presently began
to descend on the further side of the crest, and at last dropped upon a
wagon-road, and the first track of wheels that Key had seen for a
fortnight. Rude as it was, it seemed to him the highway to fortune,
for he knew that it passed Skinner's and then joined the great
stage-road to Marysville,--now his ultimate destination. A few rods
further on they came in view of Skinner's, lying like a dingy forgotten
winter snowdrift on the mountain shelf.

It contained a post-office, tavern, blacksmith's shop, "general store,"
and express-office, scarcely a dozen buildings in all, but all
differing from Collinson's Mill in some vague suggestion of vitality,
as if the daily regular pulse of civilization still beat, albeit
languidly, in that remote extremity. There was anticipation and
accomplishment twice a day; and as Key and Collinson rode up to the
express-office, the express-wag