Then Twinkly Eyes began backing away, ever so gradually, while Bobby watched through half closed lids, a growl deep down in his throat and his bob tail lashing from side to side. “What is the use?” Twinkly had asked himself. “I don’t want his old fish, and I don’t want to fight. This isn’t my idea of going fishing at all! Though, of course, if no one had been there to claim that trout, I certainly shouldn’t have let it go to waste.” Then suddenly both youngsters turned to sniff, as a new odor stole through the forest on the breath of the wind,—an odor so acrid and alarming that their fear of each other was forgotten in the face of a common peril. With the smell came a soft gray cloud floating through the aisles of trees from Pollywog Pond. Here the timber was chiefly hardwood, though an occasional birch reached white arms up against the green, and a tangle of high-bush blueberries and wild blackberry vines grew densely to as high as Twinkly Eyes could see from on tiptoe. It had been a dry spring in the region around Mount Olaf. For weeks there had been no rain, and though Rapid River still ran broad and full from the thaw, the hot sun had drunk up every drop of moisture it could draw from the forest floor of dead leaves and fallen branches. On the very night that the Red Fox family had gone frogging at Pollywog Pond, and Unk Wunk the Porcupine had amused himself by rolling down hill, and Bobby Lynx had met Twinkly Eyes on a fishing trip, the Hired Man at the Farm had set forth an hour before cock-crow to set a line of skunk traps. Following the Old Logging Road toward Pollywog Pond, he had paused on a fallen log to tie his shoe-string and light his pipe, and as he rose he had given his match a shake and thrown it away. Now of course the Hired Man meant to put his match out before he dropped it, but he didn’t look behind him to make sure. No sooner was his back turned than a thin flame sprung up in the dead leaves beside the fallen log, and soon a healthy bon-fire was snapping and curling around the log. A white birch, with its paper bark, had caught a spark and started a red snake of flame that crept along the ground with the wind, first back towards the Farm, then around to the River. And before ever the Hired Man could race back home for help, the fire had gained such headway that the whole area between the pond and the river was ablaze and the underbrush going like kindling. It was the smoke of this red ruin that had so terrified both bear and lynx that they forgot their feud. [Illustration: [Bear & lynx]] XLVIII THE FOREST AFLAME It takes a common peril to make people forget their hard feelings toward one another. Bobby Lynx was quite as willing as Twinkly Eyes to overlook the little matter of the fish, once they had sniffed the acrid smoke that now came creeping between the aisles of trees.