"We must be cautious, we must be cautious," said the other, in a thoughtful tone. "Fire is a capricious element, and often runs in a direction the least expected. I have heard of people getting so entangled in a burning wood as not to be able to escape."
"Oh, yes," cried the negro, "when I were little boy, I remember quite well Massa John Bostock and five other men wid him git in pine wood behind Albany, and it catch fire. He run here and dere, but it git all round him and roast him up black as I be. I saw dem bring in what dey fancied was he, but it no better dan a great pine stump."
"If I remember," said Lord H----, "we passed a high hill somewhere near this spot, where we had a fine, clear view over the whole of the woody region round. We had better make for that at once. The fire cannot yet have reached it, if my remembrance of the distance is correct; for though the wind sets toward us the smoke is, as yet, anything but dense."
"Pray God it be so," said Mr. Prevost, spurring forward, "but I fear it is nearer."
The rest followed as quickly as the stumps and the fallen trees would let them, and at the distance of half a mile began the ascent of the hill to which Lord H---- had alluded. As far as that spot the smoke had been becoming denser and denser every moment, apparently pouring along the valley formed by that hill and another on the left, through which valley, let it be remarked, the small river in which Walter had been seen fishing by Sir William Johnson, but now a broad and very shallow stream, took its course onward toward the Mohawk. As they began to ascend, however, the smoke decreased, and Edith exclaimed joyfully: "I hope, dear father, the fire is farther to the north."
"We shall see, we shall see," said Mr. Prevost, still pushing his horse forward. "The sun is going down fast, and a little haste will be better on all accounts."
In about five minutes more the summit of the hill was reached, at a spot where, in laying out two roads which crossed each other there, the surveyors had cleared away a considerable portion of the wood, leaving, as Lord H---- had said, a clear view over the greater part of the undulating forest country lying in the angle formed by the upper Hudson and the Mohawk. The only sign of man's habitation which could be discovered at any time was the roof and chimneys of Mr. Prevost's house, which in general could be perceived rising above the trees, upon an eminence a good deal lower than the summit which the travelers had now reached. Now, however, the house could not be seen.
The sight which the country presented was a fine but a terrible one. On the one side the sun, with his lower limb just dipped beneath the forest, was casting up floods of many-colored light, orange and purple, gold, and even green, upon the light, fantastic clouds scattered over the western sky; while above, some fleecy vapors, fleeting quickly along, were all rosy with the touch of his beams. Onward to the east and north, filling up the whole valley between the hill on which they stood and the eminence crowned by Mr. Prevost's house, and forming an almost semi-circular line of some three or four miles in extent, was a dense, reddish-brown cloud of smoke, marking where the fire raged, and softening off at each extreme to a bluish gray. No general flame could be perceived through this heavy cloud, but ever and anon a sudden flash would break across it, not bright and vivid, but dull and half obscured, when the fierce elements got hold of some of the drier and more combustible materials of the forest. Once or twice, too, suddenly at one point of the line or another, a single tree, taller perhaps than the rest, or more inflammable, or garmented in a thick matting of dry vine, would catch the flame and burst forth from the root to the topmost branch, like a tall column of fire; and here and there, too, from what cause I know not--perhaps from an accumulation of dry grass and withered leaves, seized upon by the fire and wind together--a volley of sparks would mingle with the cloud of smoke and float along, for a moment, bright and sparkling, to the westward.
It was a grand but an awful spectacle, and as Mr. Prevost gazed upon it thoughts and feelings crowded into his bosom which even Edith herself could not estimate.
"Look, look, Prevost!" cried Lord H----, after they had gazed during one or two minutes in silence. "The wind is drifting away the smoke! I can see the top of your house--it is safe, as yet--and will be safe," he added, "for the wind sets somewhat away from it."