"The fires came up so quickly they couldn't get home before them," Deirdre continued. "And when they turned to go back the flames were all round. Father sent me up. Davey and Mr. Cameron being away, he thought you mightn't know."
"If the fires are at Dale—"
There was a flicker of anxiety in Mrs. Cameron's eyes.
"They've travelled over forty miles already," Deirdre said. "And father says if the wind changes we'll get them up here for sure. They may sweep right on, as it is, and miss us. But he said it would be madness to try to fight them—with only the three of us, and if they do come this way to get down to the pool at once. He said he'd try to get here if the wind changes."
Once or twice there had been scrub fires in the summer, and Mrs. Cameron, with everybody else on the place, had helped to beat out the quickly-running, forked flames which tried to make their way across the paddocks of the clearing to the house and sheds. She had carried water for the men beating, when there was water to spare, and they had dipped their bags and branches of green gum leaves into the water and slashed at the flames in the grass.
"There are beaters and bags by the barn," she said, "I cut the beaters after Davey and his father had gone, thinking we might want them."
She meant to make a fight for her home if the fires came that way, Deirdre realised.
The afternoon wore away slowly. Mrs. Cameron had few treasures; but she made a bundle of them—a Bible, some of Davey's baby clothes, an old-fashioned gold-rimmed brooch with a mosaic on black stone that Donald Cameron had given her and desired her to wear with the black silk dress he had insisted on her having and appearing in, occasionally, when people began to call him the Laird of Ayrmuir. The dress was more an object of veneration than anything else; but she wrapped it, and the ribband and the piece of lace that she wore with it, into the bundle, and put them, with her spinning wheel and a pair of blue vases that had been her first parlour ornaments, on the back verandah where they would be easy to get if the fires threatened the house.
Deirdre moved restlessly about out of doors, watching the haze on every side of the clearing for any sign of a break in it.
"Are there any animals on the place, Mrs. Cameron?" she asked, late in the afternoon.