She stood a while gazing at the glassy surface of the lake where it spread to her vision a little way beyond the piles.  Then she went back to the green cottage.

Benton lifted alert, recognizing eyes when she peeped in the bedroom door.

“Hello, Sis,” he greeted in strangely subdued tones.  “When did you blow in?  I thought you’d deserted the sinking ship completely.  Come on in.”

She winced inwardly at his words, but made no outward sign, as she came up to his bedside.  The nurse went out.

“Perhaps you’d better not talk?” she said.

“Oh, nonsense,” he retorted feebly.  “I’m all right.  Sore as the mischief and weak.  But I don’t feel as bad as I might.  Linda still asleep?”

“I think so,” Stella answered.

“Poor kid,” he breathed; “it’s been tough on her.  Well, I guess it’s been tough on everybody.  He turned out to be some bad actor, this Monohan party.  I never did like the beggar.  He was a little too high-handed in his smooth, kid-glove way.  But I didn’t suppose he’d try to burn up a million dollars’ worth of timber to satisfy a grudge.  Well, he put his foot in it proper at last.  He’ll get a good long jolt in the pen, if the boys don’t beat the constables to him and take him to pieces.”

“He did start the fire then?” Stella muttered.

“I guess so,” Benton replied.  “At any rate, he kept it going.  Did it by his lonesome, too.  Jack suspected that.  We were watching for him as well as fighting fire.  He’d come down from the head of the lake in that speed boat of his, and this time daylight caught him before he could get back to where he had her cached, after starting a string of little fires in the edge of my north limit.  He had it in for me, too, you know; I batted him over the head with a pike-pole here at the wharf one day this spring, so he plunked me as soon as I hollered at him.  I wish he’d done it earlier in the game.  We might have saved a lot of good timber.  As it was, we couldn’t do much.  Every time the wind changed, it would break out in a new place—­too often to be accidental.  Damn him!”

“How is it going to end, the fire?” Stella forced herself to ask.  “Will you and Jack be able to save any timber?”

“If it should rain hard, and if in the meantime the boys keep it from jumping the fire-trails we’ve cut, I’ll get by with most of mine,” he said.  “But Jack’s done for.  He won’t have anything but his donkeys and gear and part of a cedar limit on the Tyee which isn’t paid for.  He had practically everything tied up in that big block of timber around the Point.  Monohan made him spend money like water to hold his own.  Jack’s broke.”

Stella’s head drooped.  Benton reached out an axe-calloused hand, all grimy and browned from the stress of fire fighting, and covered her soft fingers that rested on his bed.