Such precautions were necessary, for nothing can exceed the ferocity of fire in the debris which the woodsmen scatter about them. When the dusk had settled down on this woodland world and long shadows had crept across the clearing, wrapping themselves round the trees at its edge and scattering themselves among the thick branches till they were almost hid from view, David lighted a pine torch and gave it into the hands of the eager boy, who seized it and like a young Prometheus started forth. A single touch to the dry tinder was enough. With a dull explosion, the mass burst into flame. Shouting in his exultation, the little torch-bearer rushed on, igniting pile after pile, and leaving behind him almost at every step a mighty conflagration. At each new instant, as the night advanced, a new outburst of light illumined the darkness, until ten, twenty, fifty great heaps were roaring and seething with flames! Great jets spouted up into the midnight heavens as if about to kiss the very stars, and suddenly expired in the illimitable space above them. Immense sparks, shot out from these bonfires as from the craters of volcanoes, went sailing into the void around them and fell hissing into the water of the brooks or silently into the new-plowed furrows. The clouds above the heads of the subdued and almost terrified beholders, for no one is ever altogether prepared for the absolute awfulness of such a spectacle, were glowing with the fierce light which the fires threw upon them. Weird illuminations played fantastic tricks in the foliage from which the startled shadows had vanished. The roar of the ever-increasing fires became louder and louder, until in very terror Pepeeta crept into David's arms for protection, while the child who had fearlessly produced this scene of awful grandeur and destruction shouted with triumph at his play. "Thee's a reckless little fire-eater!" said David, watching his figure as it appeared and disappeared. "How youth trifles with forces whose powers it can neither measure nor control! It was well that I drew a furrow around our cabin or it would have been burned." His gaze was fixed on the little cabin which seemed to dance and oscillate in the palpitating light; and touched by the analogies and symbols which his penetrating eye discovered in the simple scenes of daily life, he continued to soliloquize, saying, "I should have drawn furrows around my life, before I played with fire!" "Nay, David," replied Pepeeta, "we should never have played with fire at all." "How wise we are--too late!" "Shall we walk any more cautiously when the next untried pathway opens?" he added, somewhat sadly, as he recalled the errors of the past. "We ought to, if experience has any value," said Pepeeta. "But has it? Or does it only interpret the past, and not point out the future?" "Something of both, I think." "Well we must trust it." "But not it alone. There is something, better and safer." "What is that, my love?"