"I think I can make a guess," remarked Mr. Brewster, who had also been looking about while actively engaged in fighting the devouring element. "You can see that it was on the side where Mrs. Armstrong has her soap-kettle. She must have left a bed of red ashes after rendering down the bear fat with the lye, and, during the night, the wind swept some of these against the logs. Perhaps there was a handful of dead leaves to act as tinder; and the rest came easy."
"But," said Bob's mother, quickly, "I did not have a fire under the soap-kettle yesterday, nor the day before. Indeed, it is a full week now since I used it."
The men looked quickly at one another. They realized now that there might be something more about this midnight burning than any of them had ventured to imagine. Log cabins do not take fire so easily, in the middle of the night, without some human agency back of the catastrophe.
"Come," said Anthony Brady, hoarsely, "this must be looked into. If some wicked person put the torch to this cabin, we ought to find out who he was, and punish him accordingly."
By this time there were fully a dozen men around, and nearly all of them carried guns of some pattern, either the long rifles of the day, or muskets that at close quarters were just as deadly.
Stern faces grew even more set as they heard their leader thus declare himself. If a house-burner were abroad, then he must surely belong to one of two species—for they could not imagine any but a sneaking Indian, or a malicious French trapper, doing so mean a deed.
Several of the most expert trailers began to circle around at some little distance from the cabin. They carried either rude horn lanterns, or else burning torches of fat pine, with which each cabin was usually well supplied, since candles were not plentiful in those days, and had to be made, like the soap, from the surplus fat taken from some bear that had been secured for food.
Bob and Sandy came together while thus employed.