He felt her fingers slipping from him, felt her body sagging, falling. His arm passed round her, sustaining her. Her head sank in the hollow of her arm and she sighed with weary contentment. “Marie, what is it?” “Hurry!” she muttered. But he shook her, not roughly, but with boyish impatience, boyish alarm. “No, no! Why are you here? What is the matter?” Her mind cleared slowly; her will that had set on one determination, to reach him—set so it could not loose its hold—relaxed. She breathed deeply, pushed against him in an effort to stand free. “Crab Creek Trestle,” she said. “He’s—going to burn it. He warned you—to get you—out here.” His suspicion reared itself between them. “How do you know? What are you doing here? Did he send you?” She quivered, sobbed dryly—then she shoved him away. “I know because he boasted of it. That—and other things. To-morrow that—note. The bank will make you pay it. He—said he—would be making clothespins—in your mill—” “But you—why are you here? What do you want?” She summoned her strength and her pride. “It doesn’t—matter why—I am here. You must go back. You mustn’t go on.” “So that’s it,” he said, bitterly. “He sent you to hold me back till they could do the work.” He turned and began to stride away. “No!” she cried. “You mustn’t go!” “Go back to town, Marie,” he said, his voice quivering, not with wrath, but with pain. “Go back. I’m going on.” “You mustn’t!” She took one tottering step toward him and sank until she was on her knees. He would not believe her. He would not be warned. What she had suffered, the things she had just done, had been in vain. “Go back,” he said, dully. “It isn’t safe out there. Go back.” “It isn’t safe for you—for _you_. It’s planned to have you come—alone.” He moved away from her. She forced herself to rise. “Then I’ll go with you,” she said. “Go back!” he commanded. “No,” she said, and tottered on. He set his teeth, turned his face away from her, and went on, unmindful of her sobbing, gasping breaths. At one moment they saw a redness in the sky; saw the darkness ahead fluttering like a waved cloth. “Fire,” Jim muttered, and began to run. He was too late—Crab Creek Trestle was in names! As best she could Marie followed. He gained, but she did not falter, urged herself to her utmost. Ahead of them the trestle came into view, wreathed in flames, flames that leaped and writhed and strained upward as if seeking to be released from bonds that held them to earth. The trees and bushes about seemed to rise and fall with the swelling of the tongues of fire. In the midst the framework of the trestle stood black, stark, startlingly vivid.