provides entertainment, so Lloyd was often called aside as she walked,
and invited to join some group, and tell to a knot of interested
listeners all she knew of Hero and the Major, and the training of the
ambulance dogs.

In return Lloyd's stories nearly always called forth some anecdote from
her listeners about the Red Cross work in America, and to her great
surprise she found five persons among them who had met Clara Barton in
some great national calamity of fire, flood, or pestilence.

One was a portly man with a gruff voice, who had passed through the
experiences of the forest fires that swept through Michigan, over twenty
years ago. As he told his story, he made the scenes so real that Lloyd
forgot where she was. She could almost smell the thick, stifling smoke
of the burning forest, hear the terrible crackling of the flames, feel
the scorching heat in her face, and see the frightened cattle driven
into the lakes and streams by the pursuing fire.

She listened with startled eyes as he described the wall of flame,
hemming in the peaceful home where his little son played around the
doorstep. She held her breath while he told of their mad flight from it,
when, lashing his horses into a gallop, he looked back to see it licking
up everything in the world he held dear except the frightened little
family huddled at his feet. He had worked hard to build the cottage. It
was furnished with family heirlooms brought West with them from the old
homestead in Vermont. It was hard to see those great red tongues
devouring it in a mouthful.

In the morning, although they had reached a place of safety, they were
out in a charred, blackened wilderness, without a roof to shelter them,