thought, wisely, again amending her first judgment, "but cooler, now,
than cucumbers."

She looked gravely at him as he moved about investigating, not
excitedly, alertly, full of the necessary business of escape. "Looks
bad, don't it?" she said gravely. "Like powder, them thar pine-tops."

"Oh, we'll get out all right," he answered, easily, and now she felt a
comfort in the fact that he was intentionally minimizing danger to give
confidence to the supposed weakness of her sex.

"Maybe so an' maybe not," said she, discovering, to her disgust, that it
was hard, now that he was showing strength, to keep the panic tremolo
from her own voice.

The fire had, by this time, encircled them completely, and from a
hundred points was running in toward them on tinder lines of dry
pine-needles and old leaves, flashing at them viciously along the crisp,
dry surface of old moss and lichens on the rocks. A wind had suddenly
arisen, born, no doubt, of the fire's own mighty draft. Bits of blazing
light wood, small, burning branches, myriads of flaming oak leaves and
pine-cones were swept up from the ring of fire about them, in the
chimney of the blaze, to lose their impetus only at a mighty height, and
then fall slowly, threateningly down within the burning ring. So
plentiful were these little, vicious menaces, that, within another
minute, they were dodging them continually.

He now took his place close by her side and gazed upon the spectacle,
calm-eyed, as if he found it interesting rather more than terrifying.