Maggie sought out a good spot, while Meredith took his hatchet and went to work, clearing the lopped branches of their smaller leafy twigs which were for the fire, and cutting in two the branches which were not worth trimming. There was a nice piece of work then to drag them to the bonfire place, for it was needful to choose an open, free space for making the fire, where the flames would not mount or be blown into the tops of trees that were to be left standing, and so scorch and injure them. No such open space was at command in the close neighbourhood of the cutting, so the stuff for the fire had to be transported some distance. Maggie and Meredith worked away at it, and Maggie called Esther and Meredith summoned Flora to help; and soon they were all heartily engaged, and running to and fro with armfuls, or dragging behind them on the ground the heavy umbrageous branches they might not carry. Presently Meredith stopped and collected a little bunch of dry sticks and leaves which he heaped together, tucked paper under, and laid crisp hemlock and cedar cuttings on top. Then a match was kindled and fire applied. They all watched to see it, lighting, crackling, smoking,--then the slender upshoot of flame--and Meredith began to pile on pine branches thick and fast. At first rose a thick column of smoke, for the fuel was fat and resinous and the fire had not got under way. Redoubling, soft, black and brown reeking curls, through which the sun shot his beams here and there lighting them up to golden amber. "What tints and what forms!" Meredith exclaimed. And then another light and another colour began to come into the others; tiny up-darting shoots of fire, another illumination rivalling and contrasting with the sunlight which struck the column higher up. Meredith stood still to watch it, while even Flora and Esther were dragging more branches of yellow pine to the fire and throwing them on emulously, till the pile grew and grew, and Maggie was working her cheeks into a purple state with her exertions. Half-a-dozen thick pine branches flung on, and the fire would be stifled and the smoke rise thicker and blacker, with the sunlight always catching the upper curls; then crackling and snapping and breathing, the fire would get hold, get the better, mount through the thick, encumbering piney foliage, and dart its slender living spires up into the column of smoke again. "Do see how he stands!" cried Flora. "Ditto, why don't you work?" "I am looking." "Did you never see a bonfire before?" "Never such a beauty of a one." "Beauty!" said Flora, coming to his side to look--"where is the beauty? It is just a good fire. You are a ridiculous boy, Meredith. Go to work." "Oh, don't you think it is pretty?" cried Maggie, throwing down her last burden and panting. "I think it is _lovely_! And do you smell how sweet it is, Flora?" "She is a poor girl without nose or eyes," said Meredith. "Well, here goes!"