efore they reached the scene of the fire, Wilbur realized
how different it was from the blaze he had left. Then it was a
difficulty to be overcome: now, it was a peril to be faced.

"It has run about three miles since I left it," Wilbur said. "I hope
we're not too late."

"It's never too late to try, son," replied the Ranger, "so long as there
is a tree left unburned. There ain't anything in life that it ever gets
too late to try over. If a thing's done, it ain't too late ever to try
to do something else which will make up for the first, is it?"

"But I failed to stop it before," said Wilbur.

"Nary a fail. A fight ain't lost until it's over. An' when this little
scrap is over the fire'll be out. You ain't had but one round with this
fire so far."

"That's certainly some fire," rejoined the boy as they turned sharply
from a glade to the edge of a hill that looked upon the forest just
below. It was a sight of fear. Overhead, the clouds flying before the
wind were alternately revealing and hiding the starlit and moonlit sky
behind, the dark and ragged wisps of storm-scud seeming to fly in panic
from what they saw below them. The wind moaned as though enchained and
forced to blow by some tyrannic power, instead of swaying before the
breeze, the needles of the pines seemed to tremble and shudder in the
blast, and dominating the whole,--somber, red, and malevolent,--the fire
engulfed the forest floor. In the distance, where some dead timber had
been standing, the flames had crept up the trunks of the trees, and now
fanned by the gusts of wind, were beginning to run amid the tops.

"Will it be a crown-fire, Rifle-Eye?" asked Wilbur, remembering what he
had heard of the fearful devastation committed by a fire when once it
secured a violent headway among the pines.

"It's in the tops now," said the old hunter, pointing with his finger,
"but I don't reckon there's enough wind yet to hold it up there. The
worst of it is that it's not long to morning now, an' we shall lose the
advantage o' fightin' it at night. I reckon we'd better get down and see
what we can do."

In a few minutes the hunter and Wilbur had fastened their horses and
presently were beside the fire. To the boy's surprise the old hunter
made no attack upon the fire itself, but, going in advance of it some
hundred feet, with the boy's hoe, which he dragged after him like a
plow, made a furrow in the earth almost as rapidly as a man could walk.
This, Wilbur,