“Can you come right now?” Stella asked.  “Come up, and we’ll have something served up here.  I don’t feel like running the gauntlet of the dining room just now.”

“I’ll be there in a few minutes,” Linda answered.

Stella went back to her paper.  She hadn’t noticed any particular stress laid on forest fires in the Seattle dailies, but she could not say that of this Vancouver sheet.  The front page reeked of smoke and fire.  She glanced through the various items for news of Roaring Lake, but found only a brief mention.  It was “reported” and “asserted” and “rumored” that fire was raging at one or two points there, statements that were overshadowed by positive knowledge of greater areas nearer at hand burning with a fierceness that could be seen and smelled.  The local papers had enough feature stuff in fires that threatened the very suburbs of Vancouver without going so far afield as Roaring Lake.

Linda’s entrance put a stop to her reading, without, however, changing the direction of her thought.  For after an exchange of greetings, Linda divulged the source of her worried expression, which Stella had immediately remarked.

“Who wouldn’t be worried,” Linda said, “with the whole country on fire, and no telling when it may break out in some unexpected place and wipe one out of house and home.”

“Is it so bad as that at the lake?” Stella asked uneasily.  “There’s not much in the paper.  I was looking.”

“It’s so bad,” Linda returned, with a touch of bitterness, “that I’ve been driven to the Springs for safety; that every able-bodied man on the lake who can be spared is fighting fire.  There has been one man killed, and there’s half a dozen loggers in the hospital, suffering from burns and other hurts.  Nobody knows where it will stop.  Charlie’s limits have barely been scorched, but there’s fire all along one side of them.  A change of wind—­and there you are.  Jack Fyfe’s timber is burning in a dozen places.  We’ve been praying for rain and choking in the smoke for a week.”

Stella looked out the north window.  From the ten-story height she could see ships lying in the stream, vague hulks in the smoky pall that shrouded the harbor.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“It’s devilish,” Linda went on.  “Like groping in the dark and being afraid—­for me.  I’ve been married a month, and for ten days I’ve only seen my husband at brief intervals when he comes down in the launch for supplies, or to bring an injured man.  And he doesn’t tell me anything except that we stand a fat chance of losing everything.  I sit there at the Springs, and look at that smoke wall hanging over the water, and wonder what goes on up there.  And at night there’s the red glow, very faint and far.  That’s all.  I’ve been doing nursing at the hospital to help out and to keep from brooding.  I wouldn’t be down here now, only for a list of things the doctor needs, which he thought could be obtained quicker if some one attended to it personally.  I’m taking the evening train back.”