José and his employer had done their work well. In any direction their victims chose to look the forest was swept with fire. And in the ruby glare the resistless march of the flames was a strange and awful thing to watch. Sweeping fast up the ridges, creeping with almost imperceptible progress down the glades, leaping with indescribable ferocity through the green branches of the ancient trees, slashing through a brush wall and crossing in one pounce the streams and the trails. This last hour was one of weird and terrible beauty, at least. The three of them stood beside the silent flocks, quietly waiting for their fate. There was no use in trying to drive the sheep. There was no place for them to go. True, to the right and left of the flock the flame-wall was slightly more distant than to the front and rear, but it was as impassable one place as another. Besides, the sheep themselves refused to be driven. They too were quietly waiting for the end. “One more hour,” Hugh whispered. His arms went about her, silently and strongly, as if to shelter her. “It can’t be over an hour more. And then we go—some place—together.” The girl shivered in his arms. “I wish it would come soon. It hurts—to breathe.” It was so. The heated air tortured the lungs. There was none of the cool delight that usually precedes the hour of dawn in the mountain realms. Above them the pines stood in their dark watch: silent, somber, noble sentries of the wilderness. But for all their venerable years and their great strength, they could not stand against the enemy that menaced them now. The red tongues would sweep through them, they would shudder and fall, and only black trunks, dismal and ugly, would remain when the red scourge had passed. The girl suddenly turned entreating eyes to his. There was only the dark shadow of fear in them now, none of the mad panic they had had in the nearby canyon. “Listen, Hugh,” she whispered, just in his ear. “I have one thing to ask—the hardest thing of all.” Hugh flinched—ever so slightly—and an immeasurable dread came into his face. “Tell me what it is. I think I know.” “It’s going to be hard because—you love me. And you do, don’t you? I can’t be brave if you don’t. I want to keep remembering it——” He nodded, gravely. No words were needed to assure her. This strong shepherd could only speak truth at a time like this. “But we’re mountain people—and you know it will be the best. And it’s because you love me—that I know you’ll do it for me. To spare me—and then yourself. I’d have done it back there if my hands hadn’t been tied.”