I was a little anxious for a few minutes for fear I had not started my back-fire soon enough; but the fear soon passed.  The fire came on with a swelling roar.  We followed our back-fire so close as to be almost blistered by it, coughing, gasping, covering our mouths and nostrils in such a heat and smother that I could scarcely support Rowena and keep my own footing.  Suddenly the heat and smoke grew less; I looked around, and saw that the fire had reached our burnt area, and the line was cut for lack of fuel.  It divided as a wave is split by a rock, and went in two great moving spouting fountains of red down the line of our back-fire, and swept on, leaving us scorched, blackened, bloodshot of eye and sore of lips, but safe.  We turned, with great relief to me at least, and made for the open country behind the lines.  Then for the first time, I looked at Rowena.

If I had been surprised at the way in which, considering her trouble, she had kept her prettiness and gay actions when I had last seen her, I was shocked at the change in her now.  The poor girl seemed to have given up all attempt to conceal her condition or to care for her looks.  All her rosy bloom was gone.  Her cheeks were pale and puffy, even though emaciated.  Her limbs looked thin through her disordered and torn clothes.  She wore a dark-colored hood over her snarled hair, in which there was chaff mixed with the tangles as if she had been sleeping in straw.  She was black with smoke and ashes.  Her skirts were draggled as if with repeated soaking with dew and rain.  Her shoes were worn through at the toes, and through the holes the bare toes stuck out of openings in her stockings.  While her clothes were really better than when I had first seen her, she had a beggarly appearance that, coupled with her look of dejection and misery, went to my heart—­she was naturally so bright and saucy.  She looked like a girl who had gone out into the weather and lived exposed to it until she had tanned and bleached and weathered and worn like a storm-beaten and discouraged bird with its plumage soiled and soaked and its spirit broken.  And over it all hung the cloud of impending maternity—­a cloud which should display the rainbow of hope.  But with her there was only a lurid light which is more awful than darkness.

I could not talk with her.  I could only give her directions and lend her aid.  I tried putting her on the horse behind me, but he would not carry double; so I put her in the saddle and walked by or ahead of the horse, over the blackened and ashy prairie, lit up by the red glare of the fire, and dotted here and there with little smokes which marked where there were coals, the remains of vegetable matter which burned more slowly than the dry grass.  She said nothing; but two or three times she gave a distressed little moan as if she were in pain; but this she checked as if by an effort.