Smoke hung in a heavy cloud over the clearing. The smell of burning wood was very strong.
To go was, perhaps, the wisest thing Amanda and her charges could have done, for once the fire got into this opening the place would soon become a raging furnace.
The great heaps of sawdust and rubbish, as dry as tinder, offered fuel for the flames unsurpassed elsewhere in the forest. This clearing, three or four acres in extent, would be the hottest part of the fire, if once the wind rose and blew the conflagration in its direction. Mr. Stagg climbed to the roof of the cabin to look over the open space. He shouted at the top of his voice. But he neither saw nor heard anything. His voice came back in a flat echo from the forest wall across the clearing—that was all.
There was no way of trailing the fugitives—he knew that well enough. Of course, there were plenty of cartwheel tracks; but they told nothing of interest to the troubled hardware dealer.
He slid down from the roof and went again into the cabin. Certainly the place must have been deserted in haste. There was Carolyn May’s coat. The man caught it up and stared around, as though expecting the child to be within sight.
The old woman’s clothing was scattered about, too. It did not look as though anything had been removed from the hut. Coming out, he found another article on the threshold—one of Amanda’s gloves.
Joseph Stagg picked it up eagerly and stood for a moment or two holding it in his hand as he gazed from the doorway upon the empty prospect. Then he lifted the crumpled glove to his lips.
“Oh, God, spare her!” he burst forth. “Spare them both!”
Then he kissed the glove again and hid it away in the inner pocket of his vest.
The hardware dealer tried to think of just what the fugitives might have done when they escaped from the cabin. Surely, they would not start for The Corners by the main road—that would take them directly towards the fire. Joseph Stagg had too good an opinion of Amanda Parlow’s common sense to believe that.