Nevertheless, a scrap of ember, hidden from the men's gaze
beneath a handful of dead leaves had refused to perish with its
comrade-sparks. And, in the course of five hours, an industrious
little flicker had ignited other bits of brush and of dried
leafage and last year's weed stumps. The wind was in the north.
And it had guided the course of the crawling thread of red. The
advancing line had thrown out tendrils of scarlet, as it went.

Most of these had died, in the plowed ground. One had not. It had
crept on, half-extinguished at times and again snapping merrily,
until it had reached the tool-house. The shed-like room stood on
low joists, with a clear space ten inches high between its flimsy
board floor and the ground. And, in this space, the leaves of the
preceding autumn had drifted in windrows. The persevering spark
did the rest.

Lady woke from a fitful doze, to find herself choking from smoke.
The boards of the floor were too hot for endurance. Between their
cracks thin wavery slices of smoke were pouring upward into the
room. The leaves had begun to ignite the floor-boards and the
lower part of the ramshackle building's thin walls.

While the pain and humiliation of her whipping had not been able
to wring a sound from the young thoroughbred, yet fright of this
sort was afar different thing. Howling with panic terror, she
dashed about the small enclosure, clawing frantically at door and
scantling. Once or twice she made half-hearted effort to spring
up at the closed window. But, from lack of running-space as well
as from lack of nerve to make the high leap, she failed.