f the prized Thirty. The
hungry, sweeping flames came curling, playing, leaping, dancing, roaring
on. They reached the car.

Phil remembered, long afterward, that as he stepped out of the automobile
for the last time he noticed the speedometer, twisted about so that the
light of a lamp shattered and broken, but still burning, fell upon it.
The reading was 5,599 miles--the record of the season.

Safely ahead of the fire the fleeing refugees reached Opal Lake. With a
glad shout, though their faces showed deepest anxiety and fear, Billy
Worth and Chip Slider received them.

"The raft's all ready! I've made it big enough to float a house! All our
provisions are on board, too!" said Billy to Phil, the moment he ran up.
"Where's the car?"

A few words told the story. There was no comment beyond the quick, "Oh!
what an escape!"

The snaky tongues of fire coming on swift, almost, as the wind itself,
were but two hundred yards away when the rescuers and rescued embarked
upon the raft. Boxes and camp equipage afforded seats. Billy had trimmed
a couple of extra long poles with which to move the clumsy craft, and
present safety for all was assured.

The dawn was just breaking. Once out on the water the coming daylight was
quite clear despite the smoke that in vast clouds rolled swiftly over,
whipped and torn by the wind.

"Thank goodness there's no fire to the north--not yet anyway," said
Phil rubbing his face, grimy with smoke and ashes. He was thinking of
MacLester and for the information of the Andersons briefly told of Dave's
unaccountable disappearance.

"There's a long stretch of pine on the other side," said the stranger,
still wearing his golfing cap, by the way. "There are a couple of streams
there, though, both of them flowing into the lower end of the lake. If
your friend is lost and should remember that, he could follow either one
of them and not come out wrong."

Dave was more than merely lost, Paul thought and said so. And, "You know
this country pretty well," he added, addressing the former speaker. "You
belonged to the Longknives," he went on rather tartly. "It will be the
last of the old clubhouse."

"Yes, one blot will be wiped out. It is only too bad that so much that is
good must go with it."

Paul glanced at Phil and his eyes also met Billy's. The man's words were
puzzling.

"We saw--" Paul began, but a shout interrupted him--

"_There's_ Dave! There's Dave now and some man with him!" yelled Ch