He tramped for half the night and threw himself down and slept heavily--the sleep of utter exhaustion and weariness. It was broad day when he opened his eyes. The first sound he heard was the dull roar of the flames. He turned with a hunted, fugitive look towards the west. A bright light shone through the trees. The fire was creeping around and already encircled him on two sides. His feeling was one of bitter disappointment, fear, too, mingled with it. In the south were Ryder's friends--Dannie's enemies and his. Of the east he had a horror which the study of his map did not tend to allay; there were towns there, and settlements, thickly scattered. Finally he concluded he would go forward and examine the line of fire. There might be some means by which he could make his way through it. A journey of two miles brought him to a small watercourse. The fire was burning along the opposite bank. It blazed among the scrub and underbrush and leaped from tree to tree; first to shrivel their foliage to a dead, dry brown, and then envelop them in sheets of flame. The crackling was like the report of musketry. Roger Oakley was awed by the sight. In spite of the smoke and heat he sat down on the trunk of a fallen pine to rest. Some birds fluttered out of the rolling masses of smoke above his head and flew south with shrill cries of alarm. A deer crossed the stream, not two hundred yards from where he sat, at a single bound. Next, two large timber wolves entered the water. They landed within a stone's throw of him, and trotted leisurely off. The heat soon drove him from his position, and he, too, sought refuge in the south. The wall of flame cut him off from the north and west, and to the east he would not go. There was something tragic in this blocking of his way. He wondered if it was not the Lord's wish, after all, that he should be taken. This thought had been troubling him for some time. Then he remembered Dannie. Dannie, to whom he had brought only shame and sorrow. He set his lips with grim determination. Right or wrong, the Lord's vengeance would have to wait. Perhaps He would understand the situation. He prayed that He might. Twenty-four hours later and he had turned westward, with the desperate hope that he could cross out of the path of the fire, but the hope proved futile. There was no help for it. To the east he must go if he would escape.