“Can't you think of any one who would like to make the trip?” Durks was thoughtful. He thanked his lucky stars that the M. & W. paid half his salary. At last he said: “No, I can't, Mr. Oakley.” There was a sound like the crunching of cinders underfoot on the other side of the freight car near where they were standing, but neither Durks nor Oakley heard it. The operator's jaws worked steadily in quiet animal enjoyment of their task. He was still canvassing the Junction's adult male population for the individual to whom life had become sufficiently burdensome for Oakley's purpose. Dan was gazing down the track at the red blur in the sky. Back of that ruddy glow, in the path of the flames, lay Antioch. The wind was in the north. He was thinking, as he had many times in the last hour, of Constance and the Emorys. In the face of the danger that threatened he even had a friendly feeling for the rest of Antioch. It had been decent and kindly in its fashion until Ryder set to work to ruin him. He knew he might ride into Antioch on his engine none the worse for the trip, except for a few bums, but there was the possibility of a more tragic ending. Still, whatever the result, he would have done his full part. He faced Durks again. “Any man who knows enough to shovel coal will do,” he said. “But no one will want to take such long chances, Mr. Oakley. Baker said it was just plain suicide.” “Hell!” and Dan swore like a brakeman out of temper, in the bad, thoughtless manner of his youth. At the same moment a heavy, slouching figure emerged from the shadow at the opposite end of the freight car, and came hesitatingly towards the two men. Then a voice said, in gentle admonition: “Don't swear so, Dannie. It ain't right. I'll go with you.” It was his father. CHAPTER XXIV ANTIOCH had grown indifferent to forest fires, They were of almost annual recurrence, and the town had come to expect them each fall. As the Hon. Jeb Barrows remarked, with cheerful optimism, voicing a popular belief, if it was intended Antioch should go that way it would have gone long ago. But this summer the drought had been of longer duration than usual. The woods were like tinder, and the inevitable wadding from some careless hunter's gun, or the scattered embers from some camp-fire far up in the northern part of the State, had started a conflagration that was licking up miles of timber and moving steadily south behind a vast curtain of smoke that darkened half the State. It was only when the burned-out settlers from the north began to straggle in that Antioch awoke to a proper sense of its danger.