The days were sultry August days. No rain had fallen in weeks, and the earth was a dead, dry brown. A hot haze quivered under the great trees. Off in the north, against which his face was set, a long, low, black cloud lay on the horizon. Sometimes the wind lifted it higher, and it sifted down dark threads of color against the softer blue of the summer sky. Presently the wind brought the odor of smoke. At first it was almost imperceptible--a suggestion merely, but by-and-by it was in every breath he drew. The forest was on fire ahead of him. He judged that the tide of devastation was rolling nearer, and he veered to the west. Then one evening he saw what he had not seen before--a dull red light that shone sullenly above the pines. The next day the smoke was thick in the woods; the wind, blowing strongly from the north, floated little wisps and wreaths of it down upon him. It rested like a heavy mist above the cool surface of the lake, on the shores of which he had made his camp the night previous, while some thickly grown depressions he crossed were sour with the stale, rancid odor that clung to his clothes and rendered breathing difficult. There was a powdering of fine white ashes everywhere. At first it resembled a hoar-frost, and then a scanty fall of snow. By five o'clock he gained the summit of a low ridge. From its top he was able to secure an extended view of the fire. A red line--as red as the reddest sunset--stretched away to the north as far as the eye could see. He was profoundly impressed by the spectacle. The conflagration was on a scale so gigantic that it fairly staggered him. He knew millions of feet of timber must be blazing. He decided to remain on the ridge and study the course of the fire, so he lay down to rest. Sleep came over him, for the day had been a fatiguing one, but at midnight he awoke. A dull, roaring sound was surging through the forest, and the air was stifling. The fire had burned closer while he slept. It had reached the ridge opposite, which was nearly parallel to the one he was on, and was burning along its northern base. The ridge flattened perceptibly to the west, and already at this point a single lone line of fire had surmounted the blunt crest, and was creeping down into the valley which intervened. Presently tongues, of fire shot upwards. The dark, nearer side of the ridge showed clearly in the fierce light, and soon the fire rolled over its entire length, a long, ruddy cataract of flame. As it gained the summit it seemed to fall forward and catch fresh timber, then it raced down the slope towards the valley, forming a great red avalanche that roared and hissed and crackled and sent up vast clouds of smoke into the night.