“Yes. It’s a dreadful thing that people should be so careless with fire. Fire, and the heat we get from it, is responsible for the whole progress of the race. It was the discovery that fire could be used by man that was back of every invention that has ever been made.”
“That’s why it’s the symbol of the Camp Fire, isn’t it?”
“Yes. And in this country people ought to think more of fire than they do. We lose more by fire every year than any other country in the world, because we’re so terribly careless.”
“What is that there, ahead of us, in the road?” asked Bessie, suddenly. They had just come to a bend in the road, and about a hundred yards away a group of people stood in the road.
Eleanor looked grave. She shaded her eyes with her hand, and stared ahead of her.
“Oh,” she cried, “what a shame! I remember now. There was a farm house there! I’m afraid we were wrong when we spoke of there being no houses in the path of this fire!”
They pressed on steadily, and, as they approached the group forlorn, distressed and unhappy, they saw that their fears were only too well grounded. The people in the road were staring, with drawn faces, at a scene of ruin and desolation that far outdid the burnt wastes beside the road, since what they were looking at represented human work and the toil of hands.
The foundations of a farm house were plainly to be seen, the cellar filled with the charred wood of the house itself, and in what had evidently been the yard there were heaps of ashes that showed where the barns and other buildings had stood.
In the road, staring dully at the girls as they came up, were two women and a boy about seventeen years old, as well as several young children.
Eleanor looked at them pityingly, and then spoke to the older of the two women.