demanded Will.

"Why, certainly; but it doesn't cost them a cent to maintain it.
Somebody just pulls the string, and the water comes down," laughed
Jerry.

"Oh! I see now what you mean! It's going to rain!"

"Hear! hear. He's tumbled to it at last! Sometimes it seems to me that
we'll just have to get out a special dictionary for Will, so he can find
the answers to conundrums without waste of time or energy," declared
Bluff.

"That's the penalty every genius has to pay," remarked Will composedly.

Every now and then the boys were compelled to duck their heads beneath
the surface of the river, for the heat became unbearable. When the worst
of the fire had gone by on the wings of the furious wind, things began
to change a bit for the better.

"Say! don't you think we might be getting out of here now?" demanded
Will, whose teeth, strange to say, were rattling together with the chill
of the mountain stream even while the air was still heated around them.

"I suppose it will be safe, and we can stand the heat if it will assist
to dry our clothes. Though for that matter, fellows, it's ten to one we
will be soaked through and through again before we get to camp."

"This is mighty unhealthy, I think. Such rapid changes always encourage
dangerous ailments," remarked Will, whose father, now dead, had been a