They began to grow blindly angry at their opponent. It was no longer an impersonal, natural creature of the elements, that fire. It was a cunning, a vicious, a mocking enemy. It hated them. They hated it. Its eyes were red with gloating over them. Their eyes were red and bloodshot with the fury of their battle. Its voice was hoarse with the roar of its laughing at them. Their voices were thick and their lips were cracking with the hot curses they hurled back at it.

They had forgotten the beginning of the quarrel. All but one of them had forgotten the men whom they had tracked into the hills last night and who had started the fire. All but one of them had forgotten those other men, far away and safe and cowardly, who had sent those men into the hills to do this thing.

Jeffrey Whiting had not forgotten. But as the day wore on and the fight waxed more bitter and more hopeless, even he began to lose sight of the beginning and to make it his own single feud with the fire. He fought and was beaten back and ran and went back to fight again, until there was but one thought, if it could be called a thought, in his brain: to fight on, bitterly, doggedly, without mercy, without quarter given or asked with the demon of the fire.

Now other men came from scattered, far-flung homes to the south and joined the five. Two hills stood between them and Sixth Lake, where the Chain began and stretched away to the west. If they could hold the fire to the north of these two hills then it would sweep along the north side of the lakes and the other half of the country would be safe.

The first hill was easy. They took their stand along its crest. The five weary, scarred, singed men, their voices gone, their swollen tongues protruding through their splitting lips, took new strength from the help that had come to them. They fought the enemy back down the north side of the hill, foot by foot, steadily, digging with charred sticks and throwing earth and small stones down upon it.

They were beating it at last! Only another hill like this and their work would be done. They would strike the lake and water. Water! God in Heaven! Water! A whole big lake of it! To throw themselves into it! To sink into its cool, sweet depth! And to drink, and drink and drink!

Between the two hills ran a deep ravine heavy with undergrowth. Here was the worst place. Here they stood and ran shoulder to shoulder, fighting waist deep in the brush and long grass, the hated breath of the fire in their nostrils. And they held their line. They pushed the fire on past the ravine and up the north slope of the last hill. They had won! It could not beat them now!

As he came around the brow of the hill and saw the shining body of the placid lake below him one of the new men, who still had voice, raised a shout. It ran back along the line, even the five who had no voice croaking out what would have been a cry of triumph.

But the wind heard them and laughed. Through the ravine which they had safely crossed with such mighty labour the playful wind sent a merry, flirting little gust, a draught. On the draught the lingering flames went dancing swiftly through the brush of the ravine and spread out around the southern side of the hill. Before the men could turn, the thing was done. The hill made itself into a chimney and the flames went roaring to the top of it.

The men fled over the ridge of the hill and down to the south, to get themselves out of that encircling death.

When they were beyond the circle of fire on that side, they saw the full extent of what had befallen them in what had been their moment of victory.

Not only would the fire come south of the lake and the Chain—but they themselves could not get near the lake.

Water! There it lay, below them, at their feet almost! And they could not reach it! The fire was marching in a swift, widening line between them and the lake. Not so much as a little finger might they wet in the lake.

Men lay down and wept, or cursed, or gritted silent teeth, according to the nature that was in each.

Jeffrey Whiting stood up, looking towards the lake. He saw two men pushing a boat into the lake. Through the shifting curtain of smoke and waving fire he studied them out of blistered eyes. They were not men of the hills.

They were!—They were the real enemy!—They were two of those who had set the fire! They had not stopped to fight fire. They had headed straight for the lake and had gotten there. They were safe. And they had water!

All the hot rage of the morning, seared into him by the fighting fire fury of the day, rushed back upon him.

He had not killed a man this morning. Men said he had, but he had not.

Now he would kill. The fire should not stop him. He would kill those two there in the water. In the water!

He ran madly down the slope and into the flaming, fuming maw of the fire. He went blind. His foot struck a root. He fell heavily forward, his face buried in a patch of bare earth.

Men ran to the edge of the fire and dragged him out by the feet. When they had brought him back to safety and had fanned breath into him with their hate, he opened bleared eyes and looked at them. As he understood, he turned on his face moaning:

"I didn't kill Rogers. I wish I had—I wish I had."

And south and north of the Chain the fire rolled away into the west.

* * * * *

The Bishop of Alden looked restlessly out of the window as the intolerable, sooty train jolted its slow way northward along the canal and the Black River. He had left Albany in the very early hours of the morning. Now it was nearing noon and there were yet eighty miles, four hours, of this interminable journey before he could find a good wash and rest and some clean food. But he was not hungry, neither was he querulous. There were worse ways of travel than even by a slow and dusty train. And in his wide-flung, rock-strewn diocese the Bishop had found plenty of them. He was never one to complain. A gentle philosophy of all life, a long patience that saw and understood the faults of high and low, a slow, quiet gleam of New England humour at the back of his light blue eyes; with Christ, and these things, Joseph Winthrop contrived to be a very good man and a very good bishop.

But to-day he was not content with things. He had done one thing in Albany, or rather, he would have said, he had seen it done. He had appealed to the conscience of the people of the State. And the conscience of the people had replied in no mistakable terms that the U. & M. Railroad must not dare to drive the people of the hills from their homes for the sake of what might lie beneath their land. Then the conscience of the people of the State had gone off about its business, as the public conscience has a way of doing. The public would forget. The public always forgets. He had furnished it with a mild sensation which had aroused it for a time, a matter of a few days at most. He did not hope for even the proverbial nine days. But the railroad would not forget. It never slept. For there were men behind it who said, and kept on saying, that they must have results.

He was sure that the railroad would strike back. And it would strike in some way that would be effective, but that yet would hide the hand that struck.

Thirty miles to the right of him as he rode north lay the line of the first hills. Beyond them stood the softly etched outlines of the mountains, their white-blue tones blending gently into the deep blue of the sky behind them.

Forty miles away he could make out the break in the line where Old Forge lay and the Chain began. Beyond that lay Bald Mountain and the divide. But he could not see Bald Mountain. That was strange. The day was very clear. He had noticed that there had been no dew that morning. There might have been a little haze on the hills in the early morning. But this sun would have cleared that all away by now.

Bald Mountain was as one of the points of the compass on his journey up this side of his diocese. He had never before missed it on a fair day. It was something more to him than a mere bare rock set on the top of other rocks. It was one of his marking posts. And when you remember that his was a charge of souls scattered over twenty thousand square miles of broken country, you will see that he had need of marking posts.

Bald Mountain was the limit of the territory which he could reach from the western side of his diocese. When he had to go into the country to the east of the mountain he must go all the way south to Albany and around by North Creek or he must go all the way north and east by Malone and Rouses Point and then south and west again into the mountains. The mountain was set in almost the geographical centre of his diocese and he had travelled towards it from north, east, south and west.

He missed his mountain now and rubbed his eyes in a troubled, perplexed way. When the train stopped at the next little station he went out on the platform for a clearer, steadier view.

Again he rubbed his eyes. The clear gap between the hills where he knew Old Forge nestled was gone. The open rift of sky that he had recognised a few moments before was now filled, as though a mountain had suddenly been moved into the gap. He went back to his seat and sat watching the line of the mountains. As he watched, the whole contour of the hills that he had known was changed under his very eyes. Peaks rose where never were peaks before, and rounded, smooth skulls of mountains showed against the sky where sharp peaks should have been.

He looked once more, and a sharp, swift suspicion shot into his mind, and stayed. Then a just and terrible anger rose up in the soul of Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of Alden, for he was a man of gentle heart whose passions ran deep below a placid surface.

At Booneville he stepped off the train before it had stopped and hurried to the operator's window to ask if any news had gone down the wire of a fire in the hills.

Jerry Hogan, the operator, sat humped up over his table "listening in" with shameless glee to a flirtatious conversation that was going over the wire, contrary to all rules and regulations of the Company, between the young lady operator at Snowden and the man in the office at Steuben.

The Bishop asked a hurried, anxious question.

Without looking up, Jerry answered sorrowfully:

"This ain't the bulletin board. We're busy."

The Bishop stood quiet a moment.

Then Jerry looked up. The face looking calmly through the window was the face of one who had once tapped him on the cheek as a reminder of certain things.

Jerry fell off his high stool, landing, miraculously, on his feet. He grabbed at his front lock of curly red hair and gasped:

"I—I'm sorry, Bishop! I—I—didn't hear what you said."

The Bishop—if one might say it—grinned. Then he said quickly:

"I thought I saw signs of fire in the hills. Have you heard anything on the wire?"

Jerry had seen the wrinkles around the Bishop's mouth. The beet red colour of his face had gone down several degrees. The freckles were coming back. He was now coherent.

No he had not heard anything. He was sure nothing had come down the wire. Just then the rapid-fire, steady clicking of the key changed abruptly to the sharp, staccato insistence of a "call."

Jerry held up his hand. "Lowville calling Utica," he said. They waited a little and then: "Call State Warden. Fire Beaver Run country. Call everything," Jerry repeated from the sounder, punctuating for the benefit of the Bishop.

"It must be big, Bishop," he said, turning, "or they wouldn't call—"

But the Bishop was already running for the steps of his departing train.

At Lowville he left the train and hurried to Father Brady's house. Finding the priest out on a call, he begged a hasty lunch from the housekeeper, and, commandeering some riding clothes and Father Brady's saddle horse, he was soon on the road to French Village and the hills.

It was before the days of the rural telephone and there was no telegraph up the hill road. A messenger had come down from the hills a half hour ago to the telegraph office. But there was no alarm among the people of Lowville, for there lay twenty miles of well cultivated country between them and the hills. If they noticed Father Brady's clothes riding furiously out toward the hill road, they gave the matter no more than a mild wonder.

For twenty-two miles the Bishop rode steadily up the hard dirt road over which he and Arsene LaComb had struggled in the beginning of the winter before. He thought of Tom Lansing, who had died that night. He thought of the many things that had in some way had their beginning on that night, all leading up, more or less, to this present moment. But more than all he thought of Jeffrey Lansing and other desperate men up there in the hills fighting for their lives and their little all.

He did not know who had started this fire. It might well have started accidentally. He did not know that the railroad people had sent men into the hills to start it. But if they had, and if those men were caught by the men of the hills, then there would be swift and bloody justice done. The Bishop thought of this and he rode Father Brady's horse as that good animal had never been ridden in the course of his well fed life.

Nearing Corben's, he saw that the horse could go but little farther. Registering a remonstrance to Father Brady, anent the matter of keeping his horse too fat, he rode up to bargain with Corben for a fresh horse. Corben looked at the horse from which the Bishop had just slid swiftly down. He demanded to know the Bishop's destination in the hills—which was vague, and his business—which was still more vague. He looked at the Bishop. He closed one eye and reviewed the whole matter critically. Finally he guessed that the Bishop could have the fresh horse if he bought and paid for it on the spot.

The Bishop explained that he did not have the money about him. Corben believed that. The Bishop explained that he was the bishop of the diocese. Corben did not believe that.

In the end the Bishop, chafing at the delay, persuaded the man to believe him and to accept his surety for the horse. And taking food in his pockets he pressed on into the high hills.

Already he had met wagons loaded with women and children on the road. But he knew that they would be of those who lived nearest the fringe of the hills. They would know little more than he did himself of the origin of the fire or of what was going on up there under and beyond that pall of smoke. So he did not stop to question them.

Now the road began to be dotted with these wagons of the fleeing ones, and some seemed to have come far. Twice he stopped long enough to ask a question or two. But their replies gave him no real knowledge of the situation. They had been called from their beds in the early morning by the fire. Their men had stayed, the women had fled with the children. That was all they could tell.

As he came to Lansing Mountain, he met Ruth Lansing on Brom Bones escorting Mrs. Whiting and Letitia Bascom. From this the Bishop knew without asking that the fire was now coming near, for these women would not have left their homes except in the nearness of danger.

In fact the two older women had only yielded to the most peremptory authority, exercised by Ruth in the name of Jeffrey Whiting. Even to the end gentle Letitia Bascom had rebelled vigorously against the idea that Cassius Bascom, who was notoriously unable to look after himself in the most ordinary things of life, should now be left behind on the mere argument that he was a man.

The Bishop's first question concerned Jeffrey Whiting. Ruth told what she knew. That a man had met herself and Jeffrey on the road yesterday; that the man had brought news of strange men being seen in the hills; that Jeffrey had ridden away with him toward Bald Mountain.

The Bishop understood. Bald Mountain would be the place to be watched. He could even conjecture the night vigil on the mountain, and the breaking of the fire in the dawn. He could see the desperate and futile struggle with the fire as it reached down to the hills. Back of that screen of fire there was the setting of a tragedy darker even than the one of the fire itself.

"He had my letter?" the Bishop asked, when he had heard all that Ruth had to tell.

"Yes. We had just read it."

"He went armed?" said the Bishop quietly.

"Myron Stocking brought Jeffrey's gun to him," the girl answered simply, with a full knowledge of all that the question and answer implied. The men had gone armed, prepared to kill.

"They will all be driven in upon French Village," said the Bishop slowly. "The wind will not hold any one direction in the high hills. Little Tupper Lake may be the only refuge for all in the end. The road from here there, is it open, do you know?"

"No one has come down from that far," said Ruth. "We have watched the people on the road all day. But probably they would not leave the lake. And if they did they would go north by the river. But the road certainly won't be open long. The fire is spreading north as it comes down."

"I must hurry, then," said the Bishop, gripping his reins.

"Oh, but you cannot, you must not!" exclaimed Ruth. "You will be trapped. You can never go through. We are the last to leave, except a few men with fast horses who know the country every step. You cannot go through on the road, and if you leave it you will be lost."

"Well, I can always come back," said the Bishop lightly, as he set his horse up the hill.

"But you cannot. Won't you listen, please, Bishop," Ruth pleaded after him. "The fire may cross behind you, and you'll be trapped on the road!"

But the Bishop was already riding swiftly up the hill. Whether he heard or not, he did not answer or look back.

Ruth sat in her saddle looking up the road after him. She did not know whether or not he realised his danger. Probably he did, for he was a quick man to weigh things. Even the knowledge of his danger would not drive him back. She knew that.

She knew the business upon which he went. No doubt it was one in which he was ready to risk his life. He had said that they would all be driven in upon Little Tupper. In that he meant hunters and hunted alike. For there were the hunters and the hunted. The men of the hills would be up there behind the wall of fire or working along down beside it. But while they fought the fire they would be hunting the brush and the smoke for the traces of other men. Those other men would maybe be trapped by the swift running of the fire. All might be driven to seek safety together. The hunted men would flee from the fire to a death just as certain but which they would prefer to face.

The Bishop was riding to save the lives of those men. Also he was riding to keep the men of the hills from murder. Jeffrey would be among them. Only yesterday she had spoken that word to him.

But he can do neither, she thought. He will be caught on the road, and before he will give in and turn back he will be trapped.

"I am going back to the top of the hill," she said suddenly to Mrs. Whiting. "I want to see what it looks like now. Go on down. I will catch you before long."

"No. We will pull in at the side of the road here and wait for you. Don't go past the hill. We'll wait. There's no danger down here yet, and won't be for some time."

Brom Bones made short work of the hill, for he was fresh and all day long he had been held in tight when he had wanted to run away. He did not know what that thing was from which he had all day been wanting to run. But he knew that if he had been his own master he would have run very far, hunting water. So now he bolted quickly to the top of the hill.

But the Bishop, too, was riding a fresh horse and was not sparing him. When Ruth came to the top of the hill she saw the Bishop nearly a mile away, already past her own home and mounting the long hill.

She stood watching him, undecided what to do. The chances were all against him. Perhaps he did not understand how certainly those chances stood against him. And yet, he looked and rode like a man who knew the chances and was ready to measure himself against them.

"Brom Bones could catch him, I think," she said as she watched him up the long hill. "But we could not make him come back until it was too late. I wonder if I am afraid to try. No, I don't think I'm afraid. Only somehow he seems—seems different. He doesn't seem just like a man that was reckless or ignorant of his danger. No. He knows all about it. But it doesn't count. He is a man going on business—God's business. I wonder."

Now she saw him against the rim of the sky as he went over the brow of the hill, where Jeffrey and she had stopped yesterday. He was not a pretty figure of a rider. He rode stiffly, for he was very tired from the unusual ride, and he crouched forward, saving his horse all that he could, but he was a figure not easily to be forgotten as he disappeared over the crown of the hill, seeming to ride right on into the sky.

Suddenly she felt Brom Bones quiver under her. He was looking away to the right of the long, terraced hill before her. The fire was coming, sweeping diagonally down across the face of the hill straight toward her home.

All her life she had been hearing of forest fires. Hardly a summer had passed within her memory when the menace of them had not been present among the hills. She had grown up, as all hill children did, expecting to some day have to fly for her life before one. But she had never before seen a wall of breathing fire marching down a hill toward her.

For moments the sight held her enthralled in wonder and awe. It was a living thing, moving down the hillside with an intelligent, defined course for itself. She saw it chase a red deer and a silver fox down the hill. It could not catch those timid, fleet animals in the open chase. But if they halted or turned aside it might come upon them and surround them.

While she looked, one part of her brain was numbed by the sight, but the other part was thinking rapidly. This was not the real fire. This was only one great paw of fire that shot out before the body, to sweep in any foolish thing that did not at first alarm hurry down to the level lands and safety.

The body of the fire, she was sure, was coming on in a solid front beyond the hill. It would not yet have struck the road up which the Bishop was hurrying. He might think that he could skirt past it and get into French Village before it should cross the road. But she was sure he could not do so. He would go on until he found it squarely before him. Then he would have to turn back. And here was this great limb of fire already stretching out behind him. In five minutes he would be cut off. The formation of the hills had sent the wind whirling down through a gap and carrying one stream of fire away ahead of the rest. The Bishop did not know the country to the north of the road. If he left the road he could only flounder about and wander aimlessly until the fire closed in upon him.

Ruth's decision was taken on the instant. The two women did not need her. They would know enough to drive on down to safety when they saw the fire surely coming. There was a man gone unblinking into a peril from which he would not know how to escape. He had gone to save life. He had gone to prevent crime. If he stayed in the road she could find him and lead him out to the north and probably to safety. If he did not stay in the road, well, at least, she could only make the attempt.

Brom Bones went flying along the slope of the road towards his home. For the first time in his life, he felt the cut of a whip on his flanks—to make him go faster. He did not know what it meant. Nothing like that had ever been a part of Brom Bones' scheme of life, for he had always gone as fast as he was let go. But it did not need the stroke of the whip to madden him.

Down across the slope of the hill in front of him he saw a great, red terror racing towards the road which he travelled. If he could not understand the girl's words, he could feel the thrill of rising excitement in her voice as she urged him on, saying over and over:

"You can make it, Brom! I know you can! I never struck you this way before, did I? But it's for life—a good man's life! You can make it. I know you can make it. I wouldn't ask you to if I didn't know. You can make it! It won't hurt us a bit. It can't hurt us! Bromie, dear, I tell you it can't hurt us. It just can't!"

She crouched out over the horse's shoulder, laying her weight upon her hands to even it for the horse. She stopped striking him, for she saw that neither terror nor punishment could drive him faster than he was going. He was giving her the best of his willing heart and fleet body.

But would it be enough? Fast as she raced along the road she saw that red death whirling down the hillside, to cross the road at a point just above her home. Could she pass that point before the fire came? She did not know. And when she came to within a hundred yards of where the fire would strike the road she still did not know whether she could pass it. Already she could feel the hot breath of it panting down upon her. Already showers of burning leaves and branches were whirling down upon her head and shoulders. If her horse should hesitate or bolt sidewise now they would both be burned to death. The girl knew it. And, crouching low, talking into his mane, she told him so. Perhaps he, too, knew it. He did not falter. Head down, he plunged straight into the blinding blast that swept across the road.

A wave of heavy, choking smoke struck him in the face. He reeled and reared a little, and a moaning whinny of fright broke from him. But he felt the steady, strong little hands in his mane and he plunged on again, through the smoke and out into the good air.

The fire laughed and leaped across the road behind them. It had missed them, but it did not care. The other way, it would not have cared, either.

Ruth eased Brom Bones up a little on the long slope of the hill, and turning looked back at her home. The farmer had long since gone away with his family. The place was not his. The flames were already leaping up from the grass to the windows and the roof was taking fire from the cinders and burning branches in the air. But, where everything was burning, where a whole countryside was being swept with the broom of destruction, her personal loss did not seem to matter much.

Only when she saw the flames sweep on past the house and across the hillside and attack the trees that stood guard over the graves of her loved ones did the bitterness of it enter her soul. She revolted at the cruel wickedness of it all. Her heart hated the fire. Hated the men who had set it. (She was sure that men had set it.) She wanted vengeance. The Bishop was wrong. Why should he interfere? Let men take revenge in the way of men.

But on the instant she was sorry and breathed a little prayer of and for forgiveness. You see, she was rather a downright young person. And she took her religion at its word. When she said, "Forgive us our trespasses," she meant just that. And when she said, "As we forgive those who trespass against us," she meant that, too.

The Bishop was right, of course. One horror, one sin, would not heal another.

Coming to the top of the hill, the full wonder and horror of the fire burst upon her with appalling force. What she had so far seen was but a little finger of the fire, crooked around a hill. Now in front and to the right of her, in an unbroken quarter circle of the whole horizon, there ranged a living, moving mass of flame that seemed to be coming down upon the whole world.

She knew that it was already behind her. If she had thought of herself, she would have turned Brom Bones to the left, away from the road and have fled away, by paths she knew well, to the north and out of the range of the moving terror. But only for one quaking little moment did she think of herself. Along that road ahead of her there was a man, a good man, who rode bravely, unquestioningly, to almost certain death, for others. She could save him, perhaps. So far as she could see, the fire was not yet crossing the road in front. The Bishop would still be on the road. She was sure of that. Again she asked Brom Bones for his brave best.

* * * * *

The Bishop was beginning to think that he might yet get through to French Village. His watch told him that it was six o'clock. Soon the sun would be going down, though in the impenetrable tenting of white smoke that had spread high over all the air there was nothing to show that a sun had ever shone upon the earth. With the going down of the sun the wind, too, would probably die away. The fire had not yet come to the road in front of him. If the wind fell the fire would advance but slowly, and would hardly spread to the north at all.

He was not discrediting the enemy in front. He had seen the mighty sweep of the fire and he knew that it would need but the slightest shift of the wind to send a wall of flame down upon him from which he would have to run for his life. He did not, of course, know that the fire had already crossed the road behind him. But even if he had, he would probably have kept on trusting to the chance of getting through somehow.

He was ascending another long slope of country where the road ran straight up to the east. The fire was already to the right of him, sweeping along in a steady march to the west. It was spreading steadily northward, toward the road; but he was hoping that the hill before him had served to hold it back, that it had not really crossed the road at any point, and that when he came to the top of this hill he would be able to see the road clear before him up to French Village. He was wearied to the point of exhaustion, and his nervous horse fought him constantly in an effort to bolt from the road and make off to the north. But, he argued, he had suffered nothing so far from the fire; and there was no real reason to be discouraged.

Then he came to the top of the hill.

He rubbed his eyes, as he had done a long, long time before on that same day. Five hundred yards before him as he looked down a slight slope, a belt of pine trees was burning high to the sky. The road ran straight through that. Behind and beyond the belt of pines he could see the whole country banked in terraces of flame. There was no road. This hill had divided the wind, and thus, temporarily, it had divided the fire. Already the fire had run away to the north, and it was still moving northward as it also advanced more slowly to the top of the hill where he stood.

Well, the road was still behind him. Nothing worse had happened than he had, in reason, anticipated. He must go back. He turned the horse and looked.

Across the ridge of the last hill that he had passed the fire was marching majestically. The daylight, such as it had been, had given its place to the great glow of the fire. Ten minutes ago he could not have distinguished anything back there. Now he could see the road clearly marked, nearly five miles away, and across it stood a solid wall of fire.

There were no moments to be lost. He was cut off on three sides. The way out lay to the north, over he knew not what sort of country. But at least it was a way out. He must not altogether run away from the fire, for in that way he might easily be caught and hemmed in entirely. He must ride along as near as he could in front of it. So, if he were fast enough, he might turn the edge of it and be safe again. He might even be able to go on his way again to French Village.

Yes, if he were quick enough. Also, if the fire played no new trick upon him.

His horse turned willingly from the road and ran along under the shelter of the ridge of the hill for a full mile as fast as the Bishop dared let him go. He could not drive. He was obliged to trust the horse to pick his own footing. It was mad riding over rough pasture land and brush, but it was better to let the horse have his own way.

Suddenly they came to the end of the ridge where the Bishop might have expected to be able to go around the edge of the fire. The horse stood stock still. The Bishop took one quiet, comprehensive look.

"I am sorry, boy," he said gently to the horse. "You have done your best. And I—have done my worst. You did not deserve this."

He was looking down toward Wilbur's Fork, a dry water course, two miles away and a thousand feet below.

The fire had come clear around the hill and had been driven down into the heavy timber along the water course. There it was raging away to the west down through the great trees, travelling faster than any horse could have been driven.

The Bishop looked again. Then he turned in his saddle, thinking mechanically. To the east the fire was coming over the ridge in an unbroken line—death. From the south it was advancing slowly but with a calm and certain steadiness of purpose—death. On the hill to the west it was burning brightly and running speedily to meet that swift line of fire coming down the northern side of the square—death. One narrowing avenue of escape was for the moment open. The lines on the north and the west had not met. For some minutes, a pitifully few minutes, there would be a gap between them. The horse, riderless and running by the instinct of his kind might make that gap in time. With a rider and stumbling under weight, it was useless to think of it.

With simple, characteristic decision, the Bishop slid a tired leg over the horse and came heavily to the ground.

"You have done well, boy, you shall have your chance," he said, as he hurried to loosen the heavy saddle and slip the bridle.

He looked again. There was no chance. The square of fire was closed.

"We stay together, then." And the Bishop mounted again.

Within the four walls of breathing death that were now closing around them there was one slender possibility of escape. It was not a hope. No. It was just a futile little tassel on the fringe of life. Still it was to be played with to the last. For that again is the law, applying equally to this bishop and to the little hunted furry things that ran through the grass by his horse's feet.

One fire was burning behind the other. There was just a possibility that a place might be found where the first fire would have burned away a breathing place before the other fire came up to it. It might be possible to live in that place until the second fire, finding nothing to eat, should die. It might be possible. Thinking of this, the Bishop started slowly down the hill toward the west.

Also, Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of Alden, thought of death. How should a bishop die? He remembered Saint Paul, on bishops. But there seemed to be nothing in those passages that bore on the matter immediately in hand.

Joseph Winthrop, a simple man, direct and unafraid, guessed that he would die very much as another man would die, with his rosary in his hand.

But was there not a certain ignominy in being trapped here as the dumb and senseless brute creatures were being trapped? For the life of him, the Bishop could no more see ignominy in the matter or the manner of the thing than he could see heroism.

He had come out on a bootless errand, to save the lives of certain men, if it might be. God had not seen wisdom in his plan. That was all. He had meant well. God meant better.

Into these quiet reflections the voice of a girl broke insistently with a shrill hail. A horse somewhere neighed to his horse, and the Bishop realised with a start of horror that a woman was here in this square of fire.

"It's you, Bishop, isn't it?" the voice cried frantically. "I thought I'd never find you. Over here to the right. Let your horse come. He'll follow mine. The Gaunt Rocks," she yelled back over her shoulder, "we can make them yet! There's nothing there to burn. We may smother. But we won't burn!"

Thus the Bishop found himself and his horse taken swiftly under command. It was Ruth Lansing, he recognised, but there was no time to think how she had gotten into this fortress of death. His horse followed Brom Bones through a whirl of smoke and on up a break-neck path of loose stones. Before the Bishop had time to get a fair breath or any knowledge of where he was going, he found himself on the top of what seemed to be a pile of flat, naked rocks.

They stopped, and Ruth was already down and talking soothingly to Brom Bones when the Bishop got his feet to the rocks. Looking around he saw that they were on a plateau of rock at least several acres in extent and perhaps a hundred feet above the ground about them. Looking down he saw the sea of fire lapping now at the very foot of the rocks below. They had not been an instant too soon. As he turned to speak to the girl, his eye was caught by something that ran out of one of the lines of fire. It ran and fell headlong upon the lowest of the rocks. Then it stirred and began crawling up the rocks.

It was a man coming slowly, painfully, on hands and knees up the side of the refuge. The Bishop went down a little to help. As the two came slowly to the top of the plateau, Ruth stood there waiting. The Bishop brought the man to his feet and stood there holding him in the light. The face of the newcomer was burned and swollen beyond any knowing. But in the tall, loose-jointed figure Ruth easily recognised Rafe Gadbeau.

The man swayed drunkenly in the Bishop's arms for a moment, then crumpled down inert. The Bishop knelt, loosening the shirt at the neck and holding the head of what he was quick to fear was a dying man.

The man's eyes opened and in the strong light he evidently recognised the Bishop's grimy collar, for out of his cracked and swollen lips there came the moan:

"Mon Pere, je me 'cuse—"

With a start, Ruth recognised the words. They were the form in which the French people began the telling of their sins in confession. And she hurriedly turned away toward the horses.

She smiled wearily as she leaned against Brom Bones, thinking of Jeffrey Whiting. Here was one of the things that he did not like—the Catholic Church always turning up in everything.

She wondered where he was and what he was doing and thinking, up there behind that awful veil of red.



VI

THE BUSINESS OF THE SHEPHERD

The Bishop laid the man's head back so that he lay as easy as it was possible and spoke a word or two in that astonishing French of his which was the wonder and the peculiar pride of all the North Country.

But for a long time the man seemed unable to go farther. He saw the Bishop slip the little pocket stole around his neck and seemed to know what it was and what it was for. The swollen lips, however, only continued to mumble the words with which they had begun:

"Mon Pere, je me 'cuse—"

Rafe Gadbeau could speak English as well as or better than he could speak French. But there are times when a man reverts to the tongue of his mother. And confession, especially in the face of death, is one of these.

Again the Bishop lowered the man's head and changed the position of the body, while he fanned what air there was across the gasping mouth with his hat.

Now the man tried to gather his straying wits to him. With a sharp effort that seemed to send a tremor through his whole long body he forced his faculties back into their grooves. With a muttered word of encouragement from the Bishop, he began hoarsely that precise, recitative form of confession that the good priests of Lower Canada have been drilling into the children for the last three hundred years.

Once the memory found itself going the long-accustomed way it worked easily, mechanically. Since five years he had not confessed. At that time he had received the Sacrament. He went through the "table of sins" with the methodical care of a man who knows that if he misses a step in the sequence he will lose his way. It was the story of the young men of his people in the hills, in the lumber camps, in the sawmills, in the towns. A thousand men of his kind in the hill country would have told the same story, of hard work and anger and fighting in the camps, of drink and debauch in the towns when they went down to spend their money; and would have told it in exactly the same way. The Bishop had heard the story ten thousand times.

But now—Mon Pere, je me 'cuse—there was something more, something that would not fall into the catalogue of the sins of every day. It had begun a long time ago and it was just coming to an end here at the feet of the Bishop. Yes, it was undoubtedly coming to an end. For the Bishop had found blood caked on the man's shirt, in the back, just below the shoulder blade. There was a wound there, a bullet wound, a wound from which ordinarily the man would have fallen and stayed lying where he fell.

He must tell this thing in his own way, backwards, as it unrolled itself to his mind.

"I die, Mon Pere, I die," he began between gasps. "I die. Since the afternoon I have been dying. If I could have found a spot to lie down, if I could have had two minutes free from the fire, I would have lain down to die. But shall a man lie down in hell before he is dead? No.

"All day I have run from the fire. I could not lie down to die till I had found a free place where my soul could breathe out. Here I breathe. Here I die. The rabbits and the foxes and the deer ran out from the fire, and they ran no faster than I ran. But I could not run out of its way. All day long men followed the line of the fire and fought around its edge. They fought the fire, but they hunted me. All the day long they hunted me and drove me always back into the fire when I would run out.

"They hunted me because in the early morning they had seen me with the men who set the fire. No. I did not do that. I did not set hand to the fire. Why was I with those men? Why did I go with them when they went to set the fire? Ah, that is a longer tale.

"Four years ago I was in Utica. It was in a drinking place. All were drinking. There was a fight. A man was killed. I struck no blow. Mon Pere, I struck no blow. But my knife—my knife was found in the man's heart. Who struck? I know not. A detective for this railroad that comes now into the hills found my knife. He traced it to me. He showed the knife to me. It was mine. I could not deny. But he said no word to the law. With the knife he could hang me. But he said no word. Only to me he said, 'Some day I may need you.'

"Last winter that man the detective came into the hills. Now he was not a detective. He was Rogers. He was the agent for the railroad. He would buy the land from the people.

"The people would not sell. You know of the matter. In June he came again. He was angry, because other men above him were angry. He must force the people to sell. He must trick the people. He saw me. 'You,' he said, 'I need you.'

"Mon Pere, that man owned me. On the point of my knife, like a pinch of salt, he held my life. Never a moment when I could say, I will do this, I will do that. Always I must do his bidding. For him I lied to my own people. For him I tricked my friends. For him I nearly killed the young Whiting. Always I must do as he told. He called and I came. He bade me do and I did.

"M'sieur does not know the sin of hate. It is the wild beast of all sins. And fear, too, that is the father of sin. For fear begets hate. And hate goes raging to do all sin.

"So, after fear, came hate into my heart. Before my eyes was always the face of this man, threatening with that knife of mine.

"Yesterday, in the morning came a message that I must meet him at the railroad. He would come to the end of the rail and we would go up into the high hills. I knew what was to be done. To myself, I rebelled. I would not go. I swore I would not go. A girl, a good girl that loved me, begged me not to go. To her I swore I would not go.

"I went. Fear, Mon Pere, fear is the father of all. I went because there was that knife before my eyes. I believe that good girl followed into the high hills, hoping, maybe, to bring me back at the last moment. I do not know.

"I went because I must go. I must be there in case any one should see. If any of us that went was to be caught, I was to be caught. I must be seen. I must be known to have been there. If any one was to be punished, I was that one. Rogers must be free, do you see. I would have to take the blame. I would not dare to speak.

"Through the night we skulked by Bald Mountain. We were seven. And of the seven I alone was to take the blame. They would swear it upon me. I knew.

"Never once did Rogers let me get beyond the reach of his tongue. And his speech was, 'You owe me this. Now you must pay.'

"In the first light the torches were got ready. We scattered along the fringe of the highest trees. Rogers kept me with him. A moment he went out into the clearing. Then he came running back. He had seen other men watching for us. I ran a little way. He came running behind with a lighted torch, setting fire as he ran. He yelled to me to light my torch. Again I ran, deeper into the wood. Again he came after me, the red flare of the fire running after him.

"Mon Dieu! The red flare of the fire in the wood! The red rush of fire in the air! The red flame of fire in my heart! Fear! Hate! Fire!" With a terrible convulsion the man drew himself up in the Bishop's arms, gazing wildly at the fire all about them, and screaming:

"On my knee I dropped and shot him, shot Rogers when he stopped!"

He fell back as the scream died in his throat.

The Bishop began the words of the Absolution. Some whisper of the well-remembered sound must have reached down to the soul of Rafe Gadbeau in its dark place, for, as though unconsciously, his lips began to form the words of the Act of Contrition.

As the Bishop finished, the tremor of death ran through the body in his arms. He knelt there holding the empty shell of a man.

Ruth Lansing, standing a little distance away, resting against the flank of her horse, had time to be awed and subdued by the terrific forces of this world and the other that were at work about her. This world, with the exception of this little island on which she stood, was on fire. The wind had almost entirely died out. On every side the flames rose evenly to the very heavens. Direction, distance, place, all were blotted out. There was no east, no west; no north, no south. Only an impenetrable ring of fire, no earth, no sky. Only these few bare rocks and this inverted bowl of lurid, hot, cinder-laden air out of which she must get the breath of life.

Into this ring of fire a hunted man had burst, just as she had seen a rabbit and a belated woodchuck bursting. And that man had lain himself down to die. And here, of all places, he had found the hand of the mighty, the omnipresent Catholic Church reached out ready to him!

She was only a young girl. But since that night when the Bishop had come to her as she held her father dying in her arms she had thought much. Thought had been pressed upon her. Forces had pressed themselves in upon her mind. The things that she had been hearing and reading since her childhood, the thoughts of the people among whom she had grown up, the feeling of loyalty to her own kind, all these had fought in her against the dominion of the Catholic Church which challenged them all.

Because she had so recently come under its influence, the Catholic Church seemed ever to be unfolding new wonders to her. It seemed as though she stepped ever from one holy of holies into another more wonderful, more awesome. Yet always there seemed to be something just beyond, some deeper, more mysterious meaning to which she could not quite attain. Always a door opened, only to disclose another closed door beyond it.

Here surely she stood as near to naked truth as it was possible to get. Here were none of the forms of words, none of the explanations, none of the ready-made answers of the catechism. Here were just two men. One was a bad man, a man of evil life. He was dying. In a few moments his soul must go—somewhere. The other was a good man. To-day he had risked his life to save the lives of this man and others—for Ruth was quick to suspect that Gadbeau had been caught in the fire because other men were chasing him.

Now these two men had a question to settle between them. In a very few minutes these two men must settle whether this bad man's soul was presently going to Hell or to Heaven for all eternity. You see, she was a very direct young person. She took her religion at its word, straight in the eyes, literally.

So far she had not needed to take any precautions against hearing anything that was said. The dull roar of the fire all about them effectually silenced every other sound. Then, without warning, high above the noise of the fire, came the shrill, breaking voice of Gadbeau, screaming:

"On my knee I dropped and shot him, shot Rogers as he stopped!"

Involuntarily she turned and started towards the men. Gadbeau had fallen back in the Bishop's arms and the Bishop was leaning over, apparently talking to him. She knew that she must not go near until the Bishop gave her leave. She turned back and putting her hands up to her ears buried her face in Brom Bones' mane.

But she could not put away the words that she had heard. Never, so long as she lived, was she able to forget them. Like the flash of the shot itself, they leaped to her brain and seared themselves there. Years afterwards she could shut her eyes and fairly see those words burning in her mind.

When it was ended, the Bishop called to her and she went over timidly. She heard the Bishop say:

"He is gone. Will you say a prayer, Ruth?"

Then the Bishop began to read slowly, in the light of the flames, the Prayers for the Departed. Ruth kneeling drew forth her beads and among the Mysteries she wept gently—why, she knew not.

When the Bishop had finished, he knelt a while in silence, looking into the face of the dead. Then he arose and folded the long arms on the tattered breast and straightened the body.

Ruth rose and watched him in a troubled way. Once, twice she opened her lips to speak. But she did not know what to say or how to say it. Finally she began:

"Bishop, I—I heard—"

"No, child. You heard nothing," the Bishop interrupted quietly, "nothing."

Ruth understood. And for a little space the two stood there looking down. The dead man's secret lay between them, buried under God's awful seal.

The Bishop went to his horse and unstrapping Father Brady's storm coat which he had brought wrapped it gently over the head and body of the dead man as a protection from the showers of glowing cinders that rained down upon everything.

Then they took up the interminable vigil of the night, standing at their horses' heads, their faces buried in the manes, their arms thrown over the horses' eyes.

As the night wore on the fire, having consumed everything to the east and south, moved on deliberately into the west and north. But the sharp, acrid smoke of trees left smouldering behind still kept them in exquisite, blinded torture.

The murky, grey pall of the night turned almost to black as the fires to the east died almost out in that last, lifeless hour of the night. The light of the morning showed a faint, sickly white through the smoke banks on the high hills. When it was time for the sun to be rising over Bald Mountain, the morning breezes came down lifting the heavy clouds of smoke and carrying them overhead and away into the west. They saw the world again, a grey, ash-strewn world, with not a land-mark left but the bare knobs of the hills and here and there a great tree still standing smoking like a burnt-out torch.

They mounted wearily, and taking a last look at the figure of the man lying there on his rocky bier, picked their way down to the sloping hillside. The Gaunt Rocks had saved their lives. Now they must reach Little Tupper and water if they would have their horses live. Intolerable, frightful thirst was already swelling their own lips and they knew that the plight of the horses was inevitably worse.

Ruth took the lead, for she knew the country. They must travel circuitously, avoiding the places that had been wooded for the fallen trees would still be burning and would block them everywhere. The road was impossible because it had largely run through wooded places and the trees would have fallen across it. Their situation was not desperate, but at any moment a horse might drop or turn mad for water.

For two hours they plodded steadily over the hills through the hot, loose-lying ashes. In all the world it seemed that not man nor beast nor bird was alive. The top of the earth was one grey ruin, draped with the little sworls of dust and ashes that the playful wind sent drifting up into their mouths and eyes.

They dared not ride faster than a walk, for the ashes had blown level over holes and traps of all sorts in which a galloping horse would surely break his leg. Nor would it have been safe to put the horses to any rapid expenditure of energy. The little that was left in them must be doled out to the very last ounce. For they did not yet know what lay between them and French Village and the lake. If the fire had not reached the lake during the night then it was always a possibility that, with this fresh morning wind, a new fire might spring up from the ashes of the old and place an impassable barrier between them and the water.

When this thought came to them, as it must, they involuntarily quickened their pace. The impulse was to make one wild dash for the lake. But they knew that it would be nothing short of madness. They must go slowly and carefully, enduring the torture with what fortitude they could.

The story which the Bishop had heard from the lips of the dying man had stirred him profoundly. He now knew definitely, what yesterday he had suspected, that men had been sent into the hills by the railroad people to set fire to the forests, thereby driving the people out of that part of the country which the railroad wished to possess. He was moved to anger by the knowledge, but he knew that he must try to drive that knowledge back into the deepest recess of his mind; must try to hide it even from himself, lest in some unguarded moment, some time of stress and mental conflict, he should by word or look, by a gesture or even by an omission, reveal even his consciousness of that knowledge. Now he knew that the situation which last night he had thought to meet in French Village would almost certainly confront him there this morning, if indeed he ever succeeded in reaching there. And he must be doubly on his guard lest the things which he might learn to-day should in his mind confuse themselves with what he had last night learned under the seal of the confessional.

Through all the night Ruth Lansing had been hearing the words of that last cry of the dying man. She did not know how near they came to her. She did not know that Jeffrey Whiting had stood with his gun levelled upon the man whom Gadbeau had killed. But, try as she would to keep back the knowledge which she knew she must never under any circumstances reveal, those words came ringing upon her ears. And she knew that the secret would haunt her and taunt her always.

As they came over the last of the ridges, the grey waste of the country sloping from all sides to the lake lay open before them. There was not a ruin, not a standing stick to show them where little French Village had once stood along the lake. The fire had gone completely around the lake to the very water edge and a back draught had drawn it up in a circle around the east slope. There it had burned itself out along the forest line of the higher hills. It had gone on toward the west, burning its way down to the settled farm lands. But there would be no more fire in this region.

"Would the people make their way down the river," the Bishop asked; "or did they escape back into the higher hills?"

"I don't think they did either," Ruth answered as she scanned the lake sharply. "There is something out there in the middle of the lake, and I wouldn't be surprised if they made rafts out of the logs and went through the fire that way. They'd be better off than we were, and that way they could save some things. If they had run away they would have had to drop everything."

The horses, sniffing the moist air from the lake, pricked up their ears and started briskly down the slope. It was soon plain that Ruth was right in her conjecture. They could now make out five or six large rafts which the people had evidently thrown together out of the logs that had been lying in the lake awaiting their turn at the sawmill. These were crowded with people, standing as they must have stood all through the night; and now the freshening wind, aided by such help as the people could give it with boards and poles, was moving all slowly toward the shore where their homes had been.

The heart of the Shepherd was very low as he rode fetlock deep through the ashes of what had been the street of a happy little village and watched his people coming sadly back to land. There was nothing for them to come back to. They might as well have gone to the other side of the lake to begin life again. But they would inevitably, with that dumb loyalty to places, which people share with birds, come back and begin their nests over again.

For nearly an hour they stood on the little beach, letting the horses drink a little now and then, and watching the approach of the rafts. When they came to the shallow water, men and boys jumped yelling from the rafts and came wading ashore. In a few moments the rafts were emptied of all except the very aged or the crippled who must be carried off.

They crowded around the grimy, unrecognisable Bishop and the girl with wonder and a little superstition, for it was plain that these two people must have come straight through the fire. But when Father Ponfret came running forward and knelt at the Bishop's feet, a great glad cry of wondering recognition went up from all the French people. It was their Bishop! He who spoke the French of the most astonishing! His coming was a sign! A deliverance! They had come through horrors. Now all was well! The good God had hidden His face through the long night. Now, in the morning He had sent His messenger to say that all was well!

Laughing and crying in the quick surcharge of spirits that makes their race what it is, they threw themselves on their knees begging his blessing. The Bishop bared his head and raised his hand slowly. He was infinitely humbled by the quick, spontaneous outburst of their faith. He had done nothing for them; could do nothing for them. They were homeless, pitiable, without a hope or a stick of shelter. Yet it had needed but the sight of his face to bring out their cheery unbounded confidence that God was good, that the world was right again.

The other people, the hill people of the Bishop's own blood and race, stood apart. They did not understand the scene. They were not a kind of people that could weep and laugh at once. But they were not unmoved. For years they had heard of the White Horse Chaplain. Some two or three old men of them saw him now through a mist of memory and battle smoke riding a mad horse across a field. They knew that this was the man. That he should appear out of the fire after the nightmare through which they had passed was not so much incredible as it was a part of the strange things that they had always half believed about him.

Then rose the swift, shrill cackle of tongues around the Bishop. Father Ponfret, a quick, eager little man of his people, would drag the Bishop's story from him by very force. Had he dropped from Heaven? How had he come to be in the hills? Had a miracle saved him from the fire?

The Bishop told the tale simply, accenting the folly of his own imprudence, and how he had been saved from the consequences of it by the quickness and wisdom of the young girl. Father Ponfret translated freely and with a fine flourish. Then the Bishop told of the coming of Rafe Gadbeau and how the man had died with the Sacrament. They nodded their heads in silence. There was nothing to be said. They knew who the man was. He had done wickedly. But the good God had stretched out the wing of His great Church over him at the last. Why say more? God was good. No?

Ruth Lansing went among her own hill people, grouped on the outskirts of the crowd that pressed around the Bishop, answering their eager questions and asking questions of her own. There was just one question that she wanted to ask, but something kept it back from her lips. There was no reason at all why she should not ask them about Jeffrey Whiting. Some of them must at least have heard news of him, must know in what direction he had gone to fight the fire. But some unnamed dread seemed to take possession of her so that she dared not put her crying question into words.

Some one at her elbow, who had heard what the French people were saying, asked:

"You're sure that was Gadbeau that crawled out of the fire and died, Miss Lansing?"

"Yes. I knew him well, of course. It was Gadbeau, certainly," Ruth answered without looking up.

Then a tall young fellow in front of her said:

"Then that's two of 'em done for. That was Gadbeau. And Jeff Whiting shot Rogers."

"He did not!" Ruth blazed up in the young man's face. "Jeffrey Whiting did not shoot Rogers! Rafe—!"

The horror of the thing she had been about to do rushed upon her and blinded her. The blood came rushing up into her throat and brain, choking her, stunning her, so that she gasped and staggered. The young man, Perry Waite, caught her by the arm as she seemed about to fall. She struggled a moment for control of herself, then managed to gasp:

"It's nothing— Let me go."

Perry Waite looked sharply into her face. Then he took his hand from her arm.

Trembling and horror-stricken, Ruth slipped away and crowded herself in among the people who stood around the Bishop. Here no one would be likely to speak to her. And here, too, she felt a certain relief, a sense of security, in being surrounded by people who would understand. Even though they knew nothing of her secret, yet the mere feeling that she stood among those who could have understood gave her strength and a feeling of safety even against herself which she could not have had among her own kind.

But she was not long left with her feeling of security. A wan, grey-faced girl with burning eyes caught Ruth fiercely by the arm and drew her out of the crowd. It was Cynthe Cardinal, though Ruth found it difficult to recognise in her the red-cheeked, sprightly French girl she had met in the early summer.

"You saw Rafe Gadbeau die," the girl said roughly, as she faced Ruth sharply at a little distance from the crowd. "You were there, close? No?"

"Yes, the fire was all around," Ruth answered, quaking.

"How did he die? Tell me. How?"

"Why—why, he died quickly, in the Bishop's arms."

"I know. Yes. But how? He confessed?"

"He—he went to confession, you mean. Yes, I think so."

But the girl was not to be evaded in that way.

"I know that," she persisted. "I heard M'sieur the Bishop. But did he confess—about Rogers?"

"Why, Cynthe, you must be crazy. You know I didn't hear anything. I couldn't—"

"He didn't say nothing, except in confession?" the girl questioned swiftly.

"Nothing at all," Ruth answered, relieved.

"And you heard?" the girl returned shrewdly.

"Why, Cynthe, I heard nothing. You know that."

"I know you are lying," Cynthe said slowly. "That is right. But I do not know. Will you always be able to lie? I do not know. You are Catholic, yes. But you are new. You are not like one of us. Sometime you will forget. It is not bred in the bone of you as it is bred in us. Sometime when you are not thinking some one will ask you a question and you will start and your tongue will slip, or you will be silent—and that will be just as bad."

Ruth stood looking down at the ground. She dared not speak, did not even raise her eyes, for any assurance of silence or even a reassuring look to the girl would be an admission that she must not make.

"Swear it in your heart! Swear that you did not hear a word! You cannot speak to me. But swear it to your soul," said the girl in a low, tense whisper; "swear that you will never, sleeping or waking, laughing or crying, in joy or in sorrow, let woman or man know that you heard. Swear it. And while you swear, remember." She drew Ruth close to her and almost hissed into her ear:

"Remember— You love Jeffrey Whiting!"

She dropped Ruth's arm and turned quickly away.

Ruth stood there trembling weakly, her mind lost in a whirl of fright and bewilderment. She did not know where to turn. She could not grapple with the racing thoughts that went hurtling through her mind.

This girl had loved Rafe Gadbeau. She was half crazed with her love and her grief. And she was determined to protect his name from the dark blot of murder. With the uncanny insight that is sometimes given to those beside themselves with some great grief or strain, the girl had seen Ruth's terrible secret bare in its hiding place and had plucked it out before Ruth's very eyes.

The awful, the unbelievable thing had happened, thought Ruth. She had broken the seal of the confessional! She had been entrusted with the most terrible secret that a man could have to tell, under the most awful bond that God could put upon a secret. And the secret had escaped her!

She had said no word at all. But, just as surely as if she had repeated the cry of the dying man in the night, Ruth knew that the other girl had taken her secret from her.

And with that same uncanny insight, too, the girl had looked into the future and had shown Ruth what a burden the secret was to be to her. Nay, what a burden it was already becoming. For already she was afraid to speak to any one, afraid to go near any person that she had ever known.

And that girl had stripped bare another of Ruth's secrets, one that had been hidden even from herself. She had said:

"Remember— You love Jeffrey Whiting."

In ways, she had always loved him. But she now realised that she had never known what love was. Now she knew. She had seen it flame up in the eyes of the half mad French girl, ready to clutch and tear for the dead name of the man whom she had loved. Now Ruth knew what it was, and it came burning up in her heart to protect the dear name of her own beloved one, her man. Already men were putting the brand of Cain upon him! Already the word was running from mouth to mouth over the hills— The word of blood! And with it ran the name of her love! Jeffrey, the boy she had loved since always, the man she would love forever!

He would hear it from other mouths. But, oh! the cruel, unbearable taunt was that only two days ago he had heard it first from her own lips! Why? Why? How? How had she ever said such a thing? Ever thought of such a thing?

But she could not speak as the French girl had spoken for her man. She could not swear the mouths to silence. She could not cry out the bursting, torturing truth that alone would close those mouths. No, not even to Jeffrey himself could she ever by word, or even by the faintest whisper, or even by a look, show that she knew more than his and other living mouths could tell her! Never would she be able to look into his eyes and say:

I know you did not do it.

Only in her most secret heart of hearts could she be glad that she knew. And even that knowledge was the sacred property of the dead man. It was not hers. She must try to keep it out of her mind. Love, horror, and the awful weight of God's seal pressed in upon her to crush her. There was no way to turn, no step to take. She could not meet them, could not cope with them.

Stumbling blindly, she crept out of the crowd and down to where Brom Bones stood by the lake. There the kindly French women found her, her face buried in the colt's mane, crying hysterically. They bathed her hands and face and soothed her, and when she was a little quieted they gave her drink and food. And Ruth, reviving, and knowing that she would need strength above all things, took what was given and silently faced the galling weight of the burden that was hers.

The Bishop had taken quick charge of the whole situation. The first thing to be decided was whether the people should try to hold out where they were or should attempt at once to walk out to the villages on the north or west. To the west it would mean forty miles of walking over ashes with hardly any way of carrying water. To the north it would mean a longer walk, but they could follow the river and have water at hand. The danger in that direction was that they might come into the path of a new fire that would cut them off from all help.

Even if they did come out safe to the villages, what would they do there? They would be scattered, penniless, homeless. There was nothing left for them here but the places where their homes had been, but at least they would be together. The cataclysm through which they had all passed, which had brought the prosperous and the poverty-stricken alike to the common level of just a few meals away from starvation, would here bind them together and give them a common strength for a new grip on life. If there was food enough to carry them over the four or five days that would be required to get supplies up from Lowville or from the head of the new railroad, then they should stay here.

The Bishop went swiftly among them, where already mothers were drawing family groups aside and parcelling out the doles of food. Already these mothers were erecting the invisible roof-tree and drawing around them and theirs the circle of the hearth, even though it was a circle drawn only in hot, drifting ashes. The Bishop was an inquisitor kindly of eye and understanding of heart, but by no means to be evaded. Unsuspected stores of bread and beans and tinned meats came forth from nondescript bundles of clothing and were laid under his eye. It appeared that Arsene LaComb had stayed in his little provision store until the last moment portioning out what was his with even hand, to each one as much as could be carried. The Bishop saw that it was all pitifully little for those who had lived in the village and for those refugees who had been driven in from the surrounding hills. But, he thought, it would do. These were people born to frugality, inured to scanty living.

The thing now was to give them work for their hands, to put something before them that was to be accomplished. For even in the ruin of all things it is not well for men to sit down in the ashes and merely wait. They had no tools left but the axes which they had carried in their hands to the rafts, but with these they could hew some sort of shelter out of the loose logs in the lake. A rough shack of any kind would cover at least the weaker ones until lumber could be brought up or until a saw could be had for the ruined mill at the outlet of the lake. It would be slow work and hard and a makeshift at the best. But it would put heart into them to see at least something, anything, begin to rise from the hopeless level of the ashes.

Three of the hill men had managed to keep their horses by holding desperately to them all through the day before and swimming and wading them through the night in the lake. These the Bishop despatched to what, as near as he could judge, were the nearest points from which messages could be gotten to the world outside the burnt district. They bore orders to dealers in the nearest towns for all the things that were immediately necessary for the life and rebuilding of the little village. With the orders went the notes of hand of all the men gathered here who had had a standing of credit or whose names would mean anything to the dealers. And, since the world outside would well know that these men had now nothing that would make the notes worth while, each note bore the endorsement of the Bishop of Alden. For the Bishop knew that there was no time to wait for charity and its tardy relief. Credit, that intangible, indefinable thing that alone makes the life of the world go on, must be established at once. And it was characteristic of Joseph Winthrop that, in endorsing the notes of penniless, broken men, he did not feel that he was signing obligations upon himself and his diocese. He was simply writing down his gospel of his unbounded, unafraid faith in all true men. And it is a commentary upon that faith of his that he was never presented with a single one of the notes he signed that day.

All the day long men toiled with heart and will, dragging logs and driftwood from the lake and cutting, splitting, shaping planks and joists for a shanty, while the women picked burnt nails and spikes from the ruins of what had been their homes. So that when night came down over the hills there was an actual shelter over the heads of women and children. And the light spirited, sanguine people raised cheer after cheer as their imagination leaped ahead to the new French Village that would rise glorious out of the ashes of the old. Then Father Ponfret, catching their mood, raised for them the hymn to the Good Saint Anne. They were all men from below Beaupre and from far Chicothomi where the Good Saint holds the hearts of all. That hymn had never been out of their childhood hearing. They sang it now, old and young, good and bad, their eyes filling with the quick-welling tears, their hearts rising high in hope and love and confidence on the lilt of the air. Even the Bishop, whose singing voice approached a scandal and whose French has been spoken of before, joined in loud and unashamed.

Then mothers clucking softly to their offspring in the twilight brooded them in to shelter from the night damp of the lake, and men, sharing odd pieces and wisps of tobacco, lay down to talk and plan and dropped dead asleep with the hot pipes still clenched in their teeth.

Also, a bishop, a very tired, weary man, a very old man to-night, laid his head upon a saddle and a folded blanket and considered the Mysteries of God and His world, as the beads slipped through his fingers and unfolded their story to him.

Two men were stumbling fearfully down through the ashes of the far slope to the lake. All day long they had lain on their faces in the grass just beyond the highest line of the fire. The fire had gone on past them leaving them safe. But behind them rose tier upon tier of barren rocks, and behind those lay a hundred miles nearly of unknown country. They could not go that way. They were not, in fact, fit for travel in any direction. For all the day before they had run, dodging like hunted rats, between a line of fire—of their own making—before them, and a line of armed men behind them. They had outrun the fire and gotten beyond its edge. They had outrun the men and escaped them. They were free of those two enemies. But a third enemy had run with them all through the day yesterday and had stayed with them through all the horror of last night and it had lain with them through all the blistering heat of to-day, thirst. Thirst, intolerable, scorching thirst, drying their bones, splitting their lips, bulging their eyes. And all day long, down there before their very eyes, taunting them, torturing them by its nearness, lay a lake cool and sweet and deep and wide. It was worse than the mirage of any desert, for they knew that it was real. It was not merely the illusion of the sense of sight. They could perhaps have stood the torture of one sense. But this lake came up to them through all their senses. They could feel the air from it cool upon their brows. The wind brought the smell of water up to taunt their nostrils. And, so near did it seem, they could even fancy that they heard the lapping of the little waves against the rocks. This last they knew was an illusion. But, for the matter of that, all might as well have been an illusion. Armed men, their enemies who had yesterday chased them with death in their hearts, were scattered around the shore of the lake, alert and watching for any one who might come out of the fringe of shrub and grass beyond the line of the burnt ground. No living thing could move down that bare and whitened hillside toward the lake without being marked by those armed men. And, for these two men, to be seen meant to die.

So they had lain all day on their faces and raved in their torture. Now when they saw the fires on the shore where French Village had been beginning to die down they were stumbling painfully and crazily down to the water.

They threw themselves down heavily in the burnt grass at the edge of the lake and drank greedily, feverishly until they could drink no more. Then they rolled back dizzily upon the grass and rested until they could return to drink. When they had fully slaked their thirst and rested to let the nausea of weakness pass from them they realised now that thirst was not the only thing in the world. It had taken up so much of their recent thought that they had forgotten everything else. Now a terrible and gnawing hunger came upon them and they knew that if they would live and travel—and they must travel—they would have to have food at once.

Over there at the end of the lake where the cooking fires had now died out there were men lying down to sleep with full stomachs. There was food over there, food in plenty, food to be had for the taking! Now it did not seem that thirst was so terrible, nor were armed men any great thing to be feared. Hunger was the only real enemy. Food was the one thing that they must have, before all else and in spite of all else. They would go over there and take the food in the face of all the world!

Brom Bones was hobbled down by the water side picking drowsily at a few wisps of half-burnt grass and sniffing discontentedly to himself. There was a great deal wrong with the world. He had not, it seemed, seen a spear of fresh grass for an age. And as for oats, he did not remember when he had had any. It was true that Ruth had dug up some baked potatoes out of a field for him and he had been glad to eat them, but—Fresh grass! Or oats!

Just then he felt a strange hand slipping his hobbles. It was nothing to be alarmed at, of course. But he did not like strange hands around him. He let fly a swift kick into the dark, and thought no more of the matter.

A few moments later a man went running softly toward the horse. He carried a bundle of tinned meats and preserves slung in a coat. At peril of his life he had crept up and stolen them from the common pile that was stacked up at the very door of the shanty where the women and children slept. As he came running he grabbed for Brom Bones' bridle and tried to launch himself across the colt's back. In his leap a can of meat fell and a sharp corner of it struck and cut deep into Brom Bones' hock. The colt squealed and leaped aside.

A man sprang up from the side of a fire, gripping a rifle and kicking the embers into a blaze. He saw the man struggling with the horse and fired. The colt with one unearthly scream of terror leaped and plunged head down towards the water, shot dead through his stout, faithful heart.

In a moment twenty men were running into the dark, shouting and shooting at everything that seemed to move, while the women and children screamed and wailed their fright within the little building.

The two men running with the food for which they had been willing to give their lives dropped flat on the ground unhurt. The pursuing men running wildly stumbled over them. They were quickly secured and hustled and kicked to their feet and brought back to the fire.

They must die. And they must die now. They were in the hands of men whose homes they had burned, whose dear ones they had menaced with the most terrible of deaths; men who for thirty-six hours now had been thirsting to kill them. The hour had come.

"Take them down to the gully. Build a fire and dig their graves." Old Erskine Beasley spoke the sentence.

A short, sharp cry of satisfaction was the answer. A cry that suggested the snapping of jaws let loose upon the prey.

Then Joseph Winthrop stood in the very midst of the crowd, laying hands upon the two cowering men, and spoke. A moment before he had caught his heart saying: This is justice, let it be done. But he had cried to God against the sin that had whispered at his heart, and he spoke now calmly, as one assured.

"Do we do wisely, men?" he questioned. "These men are guilty. We know that, for you saw them almost in the act. The sentence is just, for they planned what might have been death for you and yours. But shall only these two be punished? Are there not others? And if we silence these two now forever, how shall we be ever able to find the others?"

"We'll be sure of these two," said a sullen voice in the crowd.

"True," returned the Bishop, raising his voice. "But I tell you there are others greater than any of these who have come into the hills risking their lives. How shall we find and punish those other greater ones? And I tell you further there is one, for it is always one in the end. I tell you there is one man walking the world to-night without a thought of danger or disgrace from whose single mind came all this trouble upon us. That one man we must find. And I pledge you, my friends and my neighbours," he went on raising his hand, "I pledge you that that one man will be found and that he will do right by you.

"Before these men die, bring a justice—there is one of the village—and let them confess before the world and to him on paper what they know of this crime and of those who commanded it."

A grudging silence was the only answer, but the Bishop had won for the time. Old Toussaint Derossier, the village justice, was brought forward, fumbling with his beloved wallet of papers, and made to sit upon an up-turned bucket with a slab across his knee and write in his long hand of the rue Henri the story that the men told.

They were ready to tell. They were eager to spin out every detail of all they knew for they felt that men stood around them impatient for the ending of the story, that they might go on with their task.

The Bishop knew that the real struggle was yet to come. He must save these men, not only because it was his duty as a citizen and a Christian and a priest, but because he foresaw that his friend, Jeffrey Whiting, might one day be accused of the killing of a certain man, and that these men might in that day be able to tell something of that story which he himself could but must not tell.

The temper of the crowd was perhaps running a little lower when the story of the men was finished. But the Bishop was by no means sure that he could hold them back from their purpose. Nevertheless he spoke simply and with a determination that was not to be mistaken. At the first move of the leaders of the hill men to carry out their intention, he said:

"My men, you shall not do this thing. Shall not, I say. Shall not. I will prevent. I will put this old body of mine between. You shall not move these men from this spot. And if they are shot, then the bullets must pass through me.

"You will call this thing justice. But you know in your hearts it is just one thing—Revenge."

"What business is it of yours?" came an angry voice out of the crowd.

"It is not my business," said the Bishop solemnly. "It is the business of God. Of your God. Of my God. Am I a meddling priest? Have I no right to speak God's name to you, because we do not believe all the same things? My business is with the souls of men—of all men. And never in my life have I so attended to my own business as I am doing this minute, when I say to you in the name of God, of the God of my fathers and your fathers, do not put this sin of murder upon your souls this night. Have you wives? Have you mothers? Have you sweethearts? Can you go back to them with blood upon your hands and say: A man warned us, but he had no business!

"Bind these men, I say. Hold them. Fear not. Justice shall be done. And you will see right in the end. As you believe in your God, oh! believe me now! You shall see right!"

The Bishop stopped. He had won. He saw it in the faces of the men about him. God had spoken to their hearts, he saw, even through his feeble and unthought words. He saw it and was glad.

He saw the men bound. Saw a guard put over them.

Then he went down near to the lake where a girl kneeling beside her dead pet wept wildly. The proud-standing, stout-hearted horse had done his noble part in saving the life of Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of Alden. But that Bishop of Alden, that mover of men, that man of powerful words, had now no word that he could dare to say in comfort to this grief.

He covered his face and turned, walking away through the ashes into the dark. And as he walked, fingering his beads, he again considered the things of God and His world.



VII

THE INNER CITADEL

"And, gentlemen of this jury, I propose to prove to your absolute satisfaction that this defendant, Jeffrey Whiting, did wilfully and with prepared design, murder Samuel Rogers on the morning of August twentieth last. I shall not only prove to you the existence of a long-standing hatred harboured by this defendant against the murdered man, but I will show to you a direct motive for the crime. And I shall not only prove circumstantially to you that he and no other could have done the deed but I shall also convict him out of the unwilling mouths of his friends and neighbours who were, to all intents and purposes, actual eye-witnesses of the crime."

In the red sandstone courthouse of Racquette County the District Attorney of the county was opening the case for the State against Jeffrey Whiting, charged with the murder of Samuel Rogers, who had died by the hand of Rafe Gadbeau that grim morning on the side of Bald Mountain.

From early morning the streets of Danton, the little county seat of Racquette County, had been filled with the wagons and horses of the hill people who had come down for this, the second day of the trial. Yesterday the jury had been selected. They were all men of the villages and of the one little city of Racquette County, men whose lives or property had never been endangered by forest fires. Judge Leslie in questioning them and in ruling their selection had made it plain that the circumstances surrounding the killing of the man Rogers must have no weight in their minds. They must be prepared to judge the guilt or innocence of the prisoner purely on the charge of murder itself, with no regard for what rumour might say the victim had been doing at the time.

For the prisoner, it seemed unfortunate that the man had been killed just a mile or so within the line of Racquette County. Only a little of the extreme southeastern corner of that county had been burned over in the recent fire and in general it had meant very little to these people. In Tupper County where Jeffrey Whiting had lived and which had suffered terribly from the fire it should have been nearly impossible to select a jury which would have been willing to convict the slayer of Rogers under the circumstances. But to the people of the villages of Racquette County the matter did not come home. They only knew that a man had been killed up the corner of the county. A forest fire had started at about the same time and place. But few people had any clear version of the story. And there seemed to be little doubt as to the identity of the slayer.

There was another and far more potent reason why it was unfortunate for Jeffrey Whiting that Samuel Rogers had died within the lines of Racquette County. The Judge who sat upon the bench was the same man who only a few weeks before had pleaded so unctuously before the Senate committee for the rights of the downtrodden U. & M. Railroad against the lawless people of the hills. He had given the District Attorney every possible assistance toward the selection of a jury who would be at least thoughtful of the interests of the railroad. For this was not merely a murder trial. It was the case of the people of the hills against the U. & M. Railroad.

Racquette County was a "railroad" county. The life of every one of its rising villages depended absolutely upon the good will of the railroad system that had spread itself beneficently over the county and that had given it a prosperity beyond that of any other county of the North. Racquette County owed a great deal to the railroad, and it was not in the disposition or the plans of the railroad to leave the county in a position where it might forget the debt. So the railroad saw to it that only men personally known to its officials should have public office in the county. It had put this judge upon this bench. And the railroad was no niggard to its servants. It paid him well for the very timely and valuable services which he was able to render it.

The grip which the railroad corporation had upon the life of Racquette County was so complex and varied that it extended to every money-making affair in the community. It was an intangible but impenetrable mesh of interests and influences that extended in every direction and crossed and intercrossed so that no man could tell where it ended. But all men could surely tell that these lines of influence ran from all ends of the county into the hand of the attorney for the railroad in Alden and that from his hand they passed on into the hands of the single great man in New York whose money and brain dominated the whole transportation business of the State. All men knew, too, that those lines passed through the Capitol at Albany and that no man there, from the Executive down to the youngest page in the legislative corridors, was entirely immune from their influence.

Now the U. & M. Railroad had been openly charged with having procured the setting of the fire that had left five hundred hill people homeless in Tupper and Adirondack Counties. It would, of course, be impossible to bring the railroad to trial on such a charge in any county of the State. The company had really nothing to fear in the way of criminal prosecution. But the matter had touched the temper and roused the suspicions of the great, headless body called the public. The railroad felt that it must not be silent under even a muttered and vague charge of such nature. It must strike first, and in a spectacular manner. It must divert the public mind by a counter charge.

Before the rain had come down to wet the ashes of the fire, the Grand Jury of Racquette County had been prepared to find an indictment against Jeffrey Whiting for the murder of Samuel Rogers. They had found that Samuel Rogers was an agent of the railroad engaged upon a peaceable and lawful journey through the hills in the interests of his company. He had been found shot through the back of the head and the circumstances surrounding his death were of such a nature and disposition as to warrant the finding of a bill against the young man who for months had been leading a stubborn fight against the railroad.

The case had been advanced over all others on the calendar in Judge Leslie's court, for the railroad was determined to occupy the mind of the public with this case until the people should have had time to forget the sensation of the fire. The mind at the head of the railroad's affairs argued that the mind of the public could hold only one thing at a time. Therefore it was better to put this murder case into that mind and keep it there until some new thing should arise.

The celerity with which Jeffrey Whiting had been brought to trial; the well-oiled smoothness with which the machinery of the Grand Jury had done its work, and the efficient way in which judge and prosecuting attorney had worked together for the selection of what was patently a "railroad" jury, were all evidence that a strong and confident power was moving its forces to an assured and definite end. This judge and this jury would allow no confusion of circumstances to stand in the way of a clear-cut verdict. The fact that the man had been caught in the act of setting fire to the forests, if the Judge allowed it to appear in the record at all, would not stand with the jury as justification, or even extenuation of the deed of murder charged. The fate of the accused must hang solely on the question of fact, whether or not his hand had fired the fatal shot. No other question would be allowed to enter.

And on that question it seemed that the minds of all men were already made up. The prisoner's friends and associates in the hills had been at first loud in their commendation of the act which they had no doubt was his. Now, though they talked less and less, they still did not deny their belief. It was known that they had congratulated him on the very scene of the murder. What room was there in the mind of any one for doubt as to the actual facts of the killing? And since his conviction or acquittal must hinge on that single question, what room was there to hope for his acquittal?

The hill people had come down from their ruined homes, where they had been working night and day to put a roof over their families before the cold should come. They were bitter and sullen and nervous. They had no doubt whatever that Jeffrey Whiting had killed the man, and they had been forced to come down here to tell what they knew—every word of which would count against them. They had come down determined that he should not suffer for his act, which had been done, as it were, in the name of all of them. But the rapid certainty in which the machinery of the law moved on toward its sacrifice unnerved them. There was nothing for them to do, it seemed, but to sit there, idle and glum, waiting for the end.

Jeffrey Whiting sat listening stolidly to the opening arraignment by the District Attorney. He was not surprised by any of it. The chain of circumstances which had begun to wrap itself around him that morning on Bald Mountain had never for a moment relaxed its tightening hold upon him. He had followed his friends that day and all of that night and had reached Lowville early the next day. He had found his mother there safe and his aunt and even Cassius Bascom, but had been horrified to learn that Ruth Lansing had turned back into the face of the fire in an effort to find and bring back the Bishop of Alden. No word had been had of either of them. He had told his mother exactly what had happened in the hills. He had been ready to kill the man. He had wished to do so. But another had fired before he did. He had not, in fact, used his gun at all. She had believed him implicitly, of course. Why should she not? If he had actually shot the man he would have told her that just as exactly and truthfully. But Jeffrey was aware that she was the only person who did or would believe him.

He was just on the point of mounting one of his mother's horses, to go up into the lower hills in the hope of finding Ruth wandering somewhere, when he was placed under arrest for the murder of Rogers. The two men who had escaped down the line of the chain had gotten quickly to a telegraph line and had made their report. The railroad people had taken their decision and had acted on the instant. The warrant was ready and waiting for Jeffrey before he even reached Lowville.

When he had been taken out of his own county and brought before the Grand Jury in Racquette County, he realised that any hope he might have had for a trial on the moral merits of the case was thereby lost. Unless he could find and actually produce that other man, whoever he was, who had fired the shot, his own truthful story was useless. His own friends who had been there at hand would not believe his oath.

His mother and Ruth Lansing sat in court in the front seats just to the right of him. From time to time he turned to smile reassuringly at them with a confidence that he was far from feeling. His mother smiled back through glistening grey eyes, all the while marking with a twinge at her heart the great sharp lines that were cutting deep into the big boyish face of her son. Mostly she was thinking of the morning, just a few months ago when her little boy, suddenly and unaccountably grown to the size of a tall man, had been obliged to lift up her face to kiss her. He was going down into the big world, to conquer it and bring it home for her. With that boyish forgetfulness of everything but his own plans of conquest, which is at once the pride and the heart-stab of every mother with her man child, he had kissed her and told her the old, old lie that we all have told—that he would be back in a little while, that all would be the same again. And she had smiled up into his face and had compounded the lie with him.

Then in that very moment the man Rogers had come. And the mother heart in her was not gentle at the thought of him. He had come like a trail of evil across their lives, embittering the hearts of all of them. Never since she had seen him had she slept a good night. Never had she been able to drop asleep without a hard thought of him. Even now, the thought of him lying in an unhonoured grave among the ashes of the hills could not soften her heart toward him. The gentle, kindly heart of her was very near to hating even the dead as she thought of her boy brought to this pass because of that man.