As to the fire and the man who had fled before him, Strong was perplexed, but kept his own counsel. He knew that the law permitted lumbermen to enter burned lands on the State preserve and take all timber which fire had damaged. A fire which might only have scorched the trunks while it devoured the crowns above them gave a rich harvest to some lucky lumberman. Having gained access, he stripped the earth, helping himself to the living as well as the dead trees. _Fire, therefore, had become a source of profit wherein lay the temptation to kindle it._ Silas Strong knew that his land of refuge was doomed--that the forerunner of its desolation was even then hiding somewhere in the near, dusky woods. He thought of the peril after a dry summer. The mould of the forest would burn like tinder. The dethroned Emperor reached the shore of Rainbow, put up a tent, and helped to get supper ready. After supper he lay down to rest in the firelight, and told the children about the great bear and the panther-bird. Sinth, weary after that long day of travel, had gone to sleep. After an hour or so Strong rose and looked down at her. "Sh-sh!--don't w-wake her," he warned them. "I'll put ye t' b-bed." He helped them undress. "You'll have to hear our prayers," Socky whispered. Strong nodded. He sat on a box and they knelt between his knees and he put his hands on their heads and bowed his own. When they had finished he bent lower and dictated this brief kind of postscript, "An' keep us from all d-danger this n-night." They repeated the words with no suspicion of what lay behind them. Then Socky whispered, "Say something 'bout the Sundayman." "An' keep the Sundayman away," Strong added. They repeated the words, and then, as if his heart were still unsatisfied, Socky added these, "An' please take care o' my Uncle Silas." The Emperor lay thinking long after his weary companions had gone to sleep. He thought of that angry outcry and his heart smote him; he thought of the danger. Perhaps, after all, they would not dare to burn the woods now. But Strong resolved to keep awake and be ready for trouble if it came. By-and-by he lighted a lantern and wrote in his old memorandum-book as follows: _"Strong use to say prufanity does more harm when ye keep it in than when ye let it natcherly drene off but among childem it's as ketchin' as the measles. Sounds like thunder when it comes out of a boy's mouth an hits like chain lightnin."_ Long before midnight rain began to fall. Strong rose and went out under the trees and lifted his face and hands, in a picturesque and priestlike attitude, to feel the grateful drops and whispered, "Thank God!" It was a gentle shower but an hour of it would be enough. He went back to his bed and lay listening. The faded leaves that still clung in the maple-tops above them rattled like a thousand tambourines. After an hour of the grateful downpour Strong's fear abated and he "let go" and sank into deep slumber.