rest fire seemed, and as she hastened
onward her alarm became almost a panic when she perceived that the
rushing flames were rapidly forcing their way between herself and the
cottage.

At length she was compelled to turn into the dense thicket and attempt
to force her way to the west in an effort to circle around the flames
and reach the house.

In a short time the futility of her attempt became apparent and then
her one hope lay in retracing her steps to the road and flying for her
life to the south toward the town.

The twenty minutes that it took her to regain the road was all that had
been needed to cut off her retreat as effectually as her advance had
been cut off before.

A short run down the road brought her to a horrified stand, for there
before her was another wall of flame. An arm of the main conflagration
had shot out a half mile south of its parent to embrace this tiny strip
of road in its implacable clutches.

Jane knew that it was useless again to attempt to force her way through
the undergrowth.

She had tried it once, and failed. Now she realized that it would be
but a matter of minutes ere the whole space between the north and the
south would be a seething mass of billowing flames.

Calmly the girl kneeled down in the dust of the roadway and prayed for
strength to meet her fate bravely, and for the delivery of her father
and her friends from death.

Suddenly she heard her name being called aloud through the forest:

"Jane! Jane Porter!" It rang strong and clear, but in a strange voice.

"Here!" she called in reply. "Here! In the roadway!"

Then through the branches of the trees she saw a figure swinging with
the speed of a squirrel.

A veering of the wind blew a cloud of smoke about them and she could no
longer see the man who was speeding toward her, but suddenly she felt a
great arm about her. Then she was lifted up, and she felt the rushing
of the wind and the occasional brush of a branch as she was borne along.

She opened her eyes.

Far below her lay the undergrowth and the hard earth.

About her was the waving foliage of the forest.

From tree to tree swung the giant figure which bore her, and it seemed
to Jane that she was living over in a dream the experience that had
been hers in that far African jungle.

Oh, if it were but the same man who had borne her so swiftly through
the tangled verdure on that other day! but that was impossible! Yet
who else in all the world