The streak of flame that had followed down the banks of West Brook moved mysteriously. He could see the smoke of it now, hanging in a thick cloud above the ravine through which the watercourse flowed. He was tempted to believe that this was a fire set on this side of the mountain ridge. Yet Parlow had said he had seen the flames when the fire crossed the summit. The sweating horse kept up his unbroken stride, and the buckboard—a frail-looking, but strongly built, vehicle—bounded over the rough road at a pace to distract one unused to such riding. But Joseph Stagg cared nothing for the jolting. His thought was wholly fixed on the fire and on those who might be imperiled by it. Amanda Parlow and his niece might even now be threatened by the flames! The thought shook the hardware dealer to his depths. He was not a demonstrative man, that was true. His strongest feelings he hid away in his heart; and the world at large—even those nearest to him—suspected little of the emotions that seethed in Joseph Stagg’s heart and brain. Towards Carolyn May he had finally shown something of this deeper feeling. She had fairly forced him to do this. And his very soul hungered for Amanda Parlow. But she was denied to him, and he shrank, as a man with a raw wound shrinks from unskilful touch, from letting anybody suspect his feeling for the carpenter’s daughter. Of late, since Amanda had spoken to him, since the day when Caroline May and Chet Gormley had been lost out on the ice and the nurse had so courageously rung the chapel bell, Joseph Stagg’s mind had been less on business than at any time in twenty years. He thought of Amanda Parlow. He saw her while bending over the big ledger in the back office. In his memory rang the low, mellow tones of her voice. He even heard her laugh, although it had been a score of years since he had actually been within sound of her laughter. Now that danger threatened the woman he had loved all these years, it seemed as though his mind and heart were numbed. He was terrified beyond expression—terrified for her safety, and terrified for fear that somebody, even Jedidiah Parlow, should suspect just how he felt about it. From the very first instant he had known the danger of the women and the child, Joseph Stagg had determined to get to them and save them. The barrier of the fire itself should not keep him back. The stillness and oppressiveness of the atmosphere finally made an impression on his mind. He noted that already the animal life of the forest seemed to have taken fright and to have escaped. Not a rabbit, not a squirrel, was in evidence. A single jay winged his way through the wood, shrieking discordantly. Although it was the height of the mating season, the song birds were dumb. The smoke grew heavier as he pushed on. It was sharp in his nostrils, and his breathing became laboured.