es on his way to the lake, made a sound like a bear.

Up through the tree tops there had climbed a few blue rags of smoke,
for behind her a sleepy prairie fire was eating backward toward a
ploughed fire-guard, and the delightful acrid smell brought back the
memory of past prairie fires, pleasant enough to think of, as life's
battles are, if they end victoriously. Not a breath stirred in the
trees, and the prairie fire that smouldered so indolently was surely
the gentlest of its race.

Suddenly there came a gust of wind through the trees, which set them
creaking and crackling with vague apprehension, for the wind is
always the mischief maker--the tattler--the brawler who starts the
trouble--and the peaceful, slumbering absent-minded prairie fire,
nibbling away at a few dead roots and grass, had been too much for it.
Here was a perfectly good chance to make trouble which no wind could
resist.

A big black cloud went over the sun, and all in a minute the placid
waters of the lake were rasped into a pattern like the soles of new
rubbers--the trees were bending--crows cawing excitedly, and the fire,
spurred by the wind, went racing through the lake bottom and on its
way up the bank toward the open country. The cattle, which had
been feeding at the east side of the lake, sniffing danger, turned
galloping home to furnish an alibi in case of trouble.

But the excitement was short-lived owing to a circumstance which the
wind had overlooked. The wind had made a mistake in its direction, and
so the fire had one wild, glorious race up the bank only to find its
nose run right into a freshly ploughed fire-guard, steaming damp and
richly brown. The fire sputtered, choked and died down, black and
disappointed, leaving only a few smoking clumps of willows.

Then the wind, seeing no further chance of trouble, went crackling
away over the tree tops, and the sun came back, brilliant and warm
as ever, and there was nothing to show that there had been any
excitement, save only the waves on the lake. The wind was gone,
laughing and unrepentant, over the tree-tops; the sun had come back as
genially as if it had never been away--but the lake could not forget,
and it fretted and complained, in a perfectly human way, pounding the
bank in a futile attempt to get back at some one. The bank had not
been to blame, but it had to take the lake's repinings, while the real
culprit went free and unreproached.

Pearl could tell what the lake was say