"Oh," she said, distressed, "we're ketched!"

Layson, less conscious of their peril because less well informed as to
the almost explosive inflammability of dry pine-tops, took the matter
less seriously. "We'll get out, all right," said he. "Don't worry."

"There's times _to_ worry," said the girl, "an' this, I reckon--well,
it's one of 'em."

As if to prove the truth of what she said, with a burst almost like that
of flame's leap along a powder-line, the fire caught one resinous
pine-top after another with a crackling rush which was not only
fearfully apparent to the eye, but also ominously audible. Within ten
seconds the pair were ringed by sound like that of crackling musketry
upon a battlefield, and by a pyrotechnic spectacle of terrifying
magnitude. Layson had heard guns pop in untrained volleys at State Guard
manoeuvres, and was instantly impressed by the amazing similarity of
sound, but he had never in his life seen anything to be compared to the
towering ring of flame-wall which almost instantly encircled them. He
lost, perhaps, a minute, in astonished contemplation of the situation.
Then realization of their peril burst upon him with a rush. To wait
there, where they were, too evidently meant certain death. Not only
would the pulsing heat from the pine-tops already burning soon become
unendurable, but there was enough of tindrous litter strewn about the
entire area of the little clearing to make it horribly apparent to him
that, in a moment, it would all become a bed of glittering flame. He
gazed at the menacing, encroaching fire, appalled.

Madge, understanding the desperation of their situation even better than
he did, knowing, too, that a stranger could, indeed, scarce conceive the