Still the rain fell, and the wind cried; and the long night and the storm and the darkness passed, and the morning came. Hungry stirred under June's arm, and licked her face, and mewed piteously at her ear. But June's arm lay still, and June said no word. Somewhere, in a land where there was never slave and never mistress, where there were no more hungry days and frightened nights, little June was laughing softly, and had found some one to love her at last. And so she did not find Massa Linkum after all? Ah!--who would have guessed it? To that place where June had gone, where there are no masters and no slaves, he had gone before her. And don't I suppose his was the first face she saw, as she passed through the storm and the night to that waiting, beautiful place? And don't I suppose he smiled as he had smiled before, and led her gently to that other Face, of which poor little June had known nothing in all her life? Of course I do. THE STORY OF A FOREST FIRE By Raymond S. Spears For more than six weeks no rain had fallen along the southwest side of the Adirondacks. The ground was parched. In every direction from Seabury Settlement fires had been burning through the forest, but as yet the valley of the West Canada had escaped. But one night a careless man threw a burning match into a brush-heap. When morning came the west wind, blowing up the valley, was ash-laden and warm with the fire that was coming eastward toward the settlement in a line a mile wide. Soon after daybreak Lem Lawson met the fire on his way to Noblesborough, and warned the settlement of its danger. One man hastened to Noblesborough for the fire-warden, two went up the West Canada to the lumber-camps. The rest of the male population, including boys, hastened down the main road to an old log trail. It was hoped the fire might be stopped at the open the road afforded. With hoes and shovels the men dug a trench through the loam to the sand, scattering the dirt over the leaves toward the fire. When the first flames came along, they redoubled their efforts amid the flying sparks and suffocating smoke, but without avail. The sparks and great pieces of flaming birch curls carried the flames over the road into the woods beyond the men, fairly surrounding them with fire. The men could only go before it, pausing now and then to throw dirt on a spark. Those who lived in the settlement glanced from side to side, wondering if the fire would cross the brook, where they now determined to make another and the last possible stand. The settlement was built along the brink of a steep side-hill. The bed of the stream was only a few feet wide,--chiefly sand-bar and dry boulders at this time,--and beyond it, toward the fire, was a flat, or bottom, sixty rods wide, averaging not two feet above the bed of the brook.