THE FOREST ON FIRE.
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All this time the fire was advancing behind the green veil of woods. Volumes of thick smoke were borne off across the pond, alarming the dwellers in distant shanties and oases of clearing, with suggestion of the most terrific danger that can befall a settler in the bush. Before sunset the conflagration came in sight of Cedar Creek. Marching resistlessly onward, to the sound of great detonations of crashing and crackling timber, and its own vast devouring roar, the mighty fire presented a front of flame thirty feet higher than the tree-tops. Daylight went down before that huge glare. The low hanging clouds were crimsoned with a glow, not from the sinking sun, but from the billows of blaze beneath. As the dusk deepened, the terrors of the scene intensified by contrast, though in reality the triumphant fire recoiled from that blackened space fringing the stream, where it must die for want of fuel.

To prevent its spreading up to the concession line, and catching the forest there, and perhaps destroying the whole township, all the men in the neighbourhood had assembled to cut down trees, and leave a barrier of vacancy. If the wind had not been blowing from that direction, it is improbable that their endeavours would have been sufficient to keep back the burning. The crestfallen Captain Armytage, author of all the mischief, wielded an axe among them. Truly he had created a view of black smoking poles and cheerful charcoal vistas before his dwelling. Whether that were better than the utilitarian Scotchman's green woods, he did not say just now, nor have spirit even to answer Davidson's sarcastic remarks on his 'muckle clearin'.'

Far into the night, the great gaunt boles of trees stood amid wreathing flame. When all risk was over that it would communicate further, and destroy the garden or the house, Robert and the rest could admire its magnificence, and Sam Holt could tell of other forest-burnings of which he had heard, especially of the great fire which occurred in the year 1825, and consumed about two hundred square miles of woods on the Miramichi River in New Brunswick, left fourteen houses standing in the town of Newcastle, and destroyed five hundred people. Two thousand were thus reduced to pauperism.

'Such things are never heard of in Europe. Why are these forests more inflammable than those in the old world?' asked Mr. Wynn the elder.

'Because the drought and heat of the climate are so much greater,' answered Sam Holt; 'and the preponderance of pines, loaded to the end of every leaf and twig with pitch and resin, affords uncommon food for fire.'

Then as to the cause; he considered it could never be spontaneous combustion, but always accident, unless, indeed, in an exceptional case like the present, said Mr. Holt sotto voce. Settlers, burning brush heaps, or logging, sometimes permit the flame to run along the ground into the bush; and in dry weather entrance was sufficient. The boundary fences of farms were often consumed in this way, and more extensive mischief might follow.

For days the charred chaos of timber poles and fallen trunks gave forth such heat and flickering flames as to be unapproachable. Zack's Yankee brain had a scheme for utilizing the ashes, if only he had machinery big enough for converting all into potash and pearlash. This man was old Mr. Wynn's special aversion. There was indeed little in common between the well-bred European gentleman, who always, even in these poor circumstances, wore the whitest linen (he never knew how Linda toiled over those neat shirt-fronts and ruffles), and kept up the convenances of society in the bush, and had a well-educated range of thought—between all this and the Yankee storekeeper, who wore no linen at all, nor had the faintest idea of the usages of the polite world, nor an idea which might not be paralleled in the mental experience of a rat in a barn. 'Get' and 'grasp' were the twin grooves of his life.

Unconscious of the antipathy, Zack would saunter up to Cedar Creek sometimes of an evening, and, if not intercepted, would march straight into the parlour where the ladies sat, and fix his feet on the wooden chimney-piece, discharging tobacco juice at intervals into the fire with unerring labial aim. Mr. Wynn's anger at the intrusion signified nothing, nor could a repellent manner be understood by Zack without some overt act, which a strained respect for hospitality prevented on the part of the old gentleman.

'Well, Robert, how you could permit that man to walk with you for the last half-hour I do not know.' Mr. Wynn stood on the threshold, looking a complete contrast to the shuffling, retreating figure of the lank Yankee striding over to the road.