It was then that he fell to the ground helpless.
XXXV
TERROR had begun to spread in the wilderness north of Rainbow. The smoky wind, the growing firelight had roused all the children of the forest. Chattering birds rose high and took the way of the wind to safety. One could see flying lines of wild-fowl in the lighted heavens; faintly, as they passed, one could hear their startled cries. Deer ran aimlessly through the woods like frightened sheep. From scores of camps on lake and pond and river—from Buckhorn, from Barsook, from Five Ponds, from Sabattis, from Big and Little Sandy, from Lost River—people, who had seen the fire coming, were on their way out of the woods.
Master ran at first down Leonard's Trail with the boy and girl in his arms. Soon his thoughts halted him. He had withstood the severest trial that may be set before a man. To be compelled to seek safety with the children, while a woman took the way of peril before his eyes, had made him falter a moment.
He hoped that Sinth had left the ridge, now overrun with flames, and fled down the slope. If so she would be looking for Leonard's Trail. He stopped every few paces and sent a loud halloo into the woods. Fire was crackling down the side of the ridge. As he looked back it seemed to him that the great lake of hell must be flooding into the world.
Soon the trail led him to Sinth, who was on her knees and sobbing beside her brother.
That wiry little woman had struggled there alone with energy past all belief. She thought only of the danger and forgot her pain. She had toiled with the heavy body of her brother, as the ant toils with a burden larger than itself, dragging it slowly, inch by inch, in the direction of Harris's. She had moved it a distance of some fifty feet before she heard the call of Master. Then she fell moaning and clinging to the hands of him she loved better, far better even, than she had ever permitted herself to know. It may well be doubted—O you who have probably lost patience with her long ago!—if anything in human history is more wonderful than the lonely struggle of hers in that dim, flaring, threatening hell-glow.
Master quickly knelt by the fallen Emperor. "What's the matter?" he asked.