Again the dog returned, pawing, whining, howling, and trying in every way to attract her attention. What could he mean? Then for the first time flashed upon her the thought which had already occurred to the sagacious instinct of the dumb brute! The ploughed field! Yes, there alone was hope of safety! Clasping the two youngest children with one arm she almost dragged the eldest boy as she fled along the trodden path, the dog going before them showing every token of delight. The fire was at their heels, and its hot breath almost scorched their clothes as they ran. They gained the herbless ploughed field and took their station in its center just as the flames darted round on each side of them. The exhausted mother, faint with the sudden deliverance, dropped on the ground among her helpless babes. Father of mercies! what an escape! In a few moments the flames attacked the haystack, which was but a morsel to its fury, and then seizing the house devoured it more slowly, while the great volume of the fire swept around over the plain. Long did the light of the burning home blight the eye of the lone woman after the flames had done their worst on the prairie around her and gone on bearing ruin and devastation to the southern plains and groves. The vigils and the terrors of that fearful night wrought their work on the lonely woman, and she sank into a trance-like slumber upon the naked earth, with her babes nestling in her lap and the dog, her noble guardian, crouching at her feet. She awoke with the first light of morning to the terrible realities from which for a few brief hours she had had a blessed oblivion. She arose as from a dream and cast a dazed look southward over a charred and blackened expanse stretching to the horizon, over which the smoke was hanging like a pall. Turning away, stunned by the fearful recollection, her eyes fell upon the smouldering ruins of her once happy home. She tottered with her chilled and hungry children towards the heap of smoking rafters and still glowing embers of the cabin, with which the morning breezes were toying as in merry pastime, and sat down upon a mound which stood before what had once been the door. Here, at least, was warmth, but whither should she go for shelter and food. There was no house within forty miles and the cruel flames had spared neither grain nor meat. There was no shelter but the canopy of heaven and no food but roots and half-burned nuts.