Across the water came what might have been the sound of a fusillade of rifles, and with it mingled another sound as of shrieking.
"What is it?" asked the girl.
"Branches bursting in the heat, trees falling."
"How long will it last?"
"Don't know. Weeks maybe! The fire might travel a hundred miles."
Helen shuddered again. "If we had not been near the water——"
"Finis!" he said with a little laugh, and they fell silent again watching the awful thing from which they had so narrowly escaped.
The raft drifted slowly along, borne by a current towards the northern end of the lake and crossing it obliquely, and the girl crouched in her place apparently absorbed in the spectacle the fire afforded. An hour passed, and then glancing at her Stane saw that she had fallen asleep. A little smile came on his face, and was followed by an ardent look of admiration as he continued to stare at her. She was flushed with sleep, and grimy with sweat and smoke and dirt. The grey shirt-sleeves, rolled up above the elbows, showed her scratched forearms, and on one hand, hanging across her knee in the abandon of sleep, with startling incongruity gleamed a diamond ring. The beautiful chestnut hair had escaped from its fastenings, and hung in tumbled masses, and there were ragged tears here and there in the borrowed raiment. Never, thought Stane to himself, had he seen a lady more dishevelled or more beautiful, and as he watched her sleeping, worn out with her herculean labours, his heart warmed to her in gratitude and love.
She slept for quite a long time, and when she opened her eyes, she looked round in surprise. The fire still roared on its way through the woods on the distant shore, over which hung a huge pall of smoke, but the raft was now a long way from the zone of destruction and drifting slowly but surely towards the northern end of the lake. She measured with her eyes the distance they had drifted, and looked towards the shore which they were steadily approaching, then she spoke.
"I must have slept for a long time."