"How far is it back to high ground?" "Quite a ways. Too far to wade. It would be over our heads in places, too. I don't like the look of it, do you? Not with those fires going, and--" "I dare say it won't get any worse." Gray spoke with a carelessness that he was far from feeling, but his tone did not deceive the girl. "It doesn't have to get any worse," she declared, im patiently. "There's oil enough here to burn. We're in the middle of a lake of it. What 'll happen if it catches fire?" "Frankly, I don't know. I've never been marooned in a lake of oil. Probably this rain would quench it-" "You know better than that!" Allie cried. "Don't act as if I were a kid. We're in a bad fix, with fire on three sides of us." "At least we'll be as well off inside as out here," Gray declared, and his companion agreed, so together they went into her room, where, side by side, they peered through her window. What Allie had said was true, and the man pinched himself to see if he were dreaming. This conflagration was even closer than the others, and he could not doubt that there was every likelihood of its spreading to the surface of the lake itself. Here was a situation, truly. For the life of him he could think of no way out of it. "I've read about this sort of thing," Allie was saying. "Tanks bursting and rivers afire. It spreads all over, the fire does, and there's no putting it out." "One thing sure, this lightning won't last long--" A blue glare and a ripping explosion gave the lie to Gray's cheering words. Allie Briskow recoiled from the window. "We'll be burned alive!" she gasped. "Roasted like rats in a trap. I--I'm frightened, Mr. Gray." She drew closer to him. "No need of that. We'll get out of this scrape somehow--people always do." A flicker lit the room, and he saw that the face upturned to his was wide eyed, strained. That brief glimpse of Allie, like a picture seen through the shutter of a camera, remained long with the man, for her hair was unbound, her lips were parted, and her dark eyes were peculiarly brilliant; through the opening of her lacy negligee her round, white neck and swelling bosom were exposed. It was a head, a bust, to be remembered. "I--You got to--hold me," she said, huskily, and he felt her body shrink close to his. She clung tightly to him, trembling at first, then shaking in every limb. Fright, it seemed, had suddenly mastered Allie Briskow.