“But the rain will put out the fire, Tom,” said Nan, who could not understand even now the fierce power of a conflagration of this kind.
“Look there!” yelled Tom, suddenly glancing back over her head as she sat behind him on the wagon tongue.
With a roar like an exploding boiler, the flames leaped up the heart of the hollow tree. The bursted crust of the sawdust heap had given free ingress to the wind, and a draught being started, it sucked the flames directly up the tall chimney the tree made.
The fire burst from the broken top. The flames met the falling rain as though they were unquenchable. Indeed the clouds were scattering, and second by second the downfall was decreasing. The tempest of rain was almost over; but the wind remained to fan the flames that had now broken cover in several spots, as well as through the tall and hollow tree.
Tom hastened his team toward the main road that passed through the tamarack swamp. At one end of it was Pine Camp; in the other direction, after passing the knoll on which the Vanderwillers lived, the roadway came out upon a more traveled road to the forks and the railroad.
Pine Camp was the nearest place where help could be secured to beat down the fire, if, indeed, this were at all possible. There was a telephone line there which, in a roundabout way, could be made to carry the news of the forest fire to all the settlements in the Big Woods and along the railroad line.
But Nan seized Tom's arm and shook it to call his attention as the horses neared the road.
“Tom! For goodness' sake!” she gasped.
“What's the matter now?” her cousin demanded, rather sharply, for his burns were painful.
“Toby, the Vanderwillers! What will become of them?”