It was not big as forest fires go, and the trees were mostly hardwood, which go slowly. But the fire lay between Bobby and home. It was to the Lynx kitten a peril new to his experience. His first thought was concealment, and he leaped into a tall pine and clambered to the topmost branches that would hold him. Twinkly Eyes, mere curiosity once the first shock of his alarm was past, went shambling through the underbrush to see whence came that pungent cloud. What Bobby saw from his outlook was a wall of fire. This advanced rapidly on the freshening wind. It devoured the underbrush that covered the forest floor, and it all but outsped the creatures he dimly saw were fleeing before it. Here leaping flames climbed to the very tree-tops on the arms of the paper birches, and even the hard pines gave up their deadwood and smaller branches. Long arms of scarlet raced through the open patches, devouring the dead pine needles and dry oak leaves. Their snapping and crackling widened Bobby’s eyes with terror as he flattened himself along his limb. Soon, as Twinkly Eyes discovered before he had gone very far, the thickening smoke cloud was becoming uncomfortably hot. Its breath stung his nostrils and closed his eyes, and he gasped and stumbled, and finally turned back in one mad dash of terror. Bobby turned to peer longingly across the river, which here stretched wider than he dared to swim. He feared the water almost more than these unknown creatures of fire and smoke that seemed to be circling in on him now from every other side. He crept stealthily down his pine tree on the side opposite the flames, and on to another that all but overhung the water, and there he lay, green eyes dilating nervously as he peered down at the scene around him. Twinkly Eyes dashed first up-stream, then down, in his anxiety to get back to his den on Mount Olaf. For added to all his other troubles it was by now broad daylight, and he wanted to hide himself away and sleep till the shelter of the dark came round again. But there was no way out, and he took his stand at the edge of the water, eying the swift current, loath to venture the long swim to the other shore unless compelled to. [Illustration: [Flames]] XLIX IN THE FACE OF A COMMON PERIL As the morning wore on, the wind grew stronger, blowing the leaping flames straight toward the river bank, where Bob and Twinkly Eyes huddled side by side in terror. It was not a big fire, but it swept through the dry underbrush of the hardwood grove from Pollywog Pond to the plowed fields at the Valley Farm, and from the Old Logging road to the river.