"You don't, heh?" Lane whirled and stumped back. He bent down and set his face close to the saplings, his eyes narrowing like a cat's, his nose wrinkling in mighty anger. "You can steal time paid for by Pulaski D. Britt, and hang around Misery Gore, and coax on an ignorant girl into a worse hell than she's living in now"--he pointed a quivering finger at the smoke-wreathed valley--"when you know and I know, and everyone on these mountain-tops of the Umcolcus knows and gossips it with the settlements, that you've picked her up only to throw her farther into the wallow where you found her. It's the Ide girl you're courtin'. It's poor little Kate of Misery that you're killin'. There isn't another man in the north woods mean enough to steal from a girl as poor as she is--steal love and hope and faith. It's all she's got, MacLeod, and you've taken all." The young man grunted a sullen oath. "There's a lot I could say to you," raged Lane, "but I ain't going to waste time doing it. I'll simply express my opinion of you by--" He spat squarely into the convulsed face of MacLeod, and went away into his cabin. CHAPTER X "LADDER" LANE'S SOIRÉE "And down from off the mountains in the shooting sheets of flame The devils of Katahdin come to play their reg'lar game. So 'tis: men hold tight! Pray for mornin' light! Katahdin's caves are empty and hell's broke loose to-night!" --Ha'nt of Pamola. As the hours of the day went on, Colin MacLeod, caged, helpless, set high on the bald brow of old Jerusalem, where every phase of the great fire was spread before his eyes, found abundant opportunity to curse himself for a fool. In time, of course, Attean or some other point would realize the extent of the conflagration and call for help. But now, hidden under Jerusalem and confined to the slash under the green trees, it was a racing ground-fire that crouched and ran. It came rapidly, but in a measure secretly. It showed a subtility of selection. It did not waste time on the green forest of beeches and maples. It was hurrying north towards its traditional prey. That prey was waiting for it, rooted on the slopes of Jerusalem and the Umcolcus, on the Attean and the Enchanted--the towering black growth of hemlock, pine, and spruce--the apple of Pulaski Britt's commercial eye--the hope of his associates. Once there, it would spring from its crouching race on the ground. It would climb the resinous trunks and torch and flare and rage and roar in the tinder-tops--a dreaded "crown-fire" that only the exhaustion of fuel or the rains of God would stop. Attean would see that fire leaping past Jerusalem, and would swear and wonder and report too late. Just now hours were as precious as days.