“The first day was all very well, and I slept well enough the first night; but on the morning of the second day I found the air full of smoke.  However, I did not give much thought to that, for there had been a smoky look about the sky for a week, and the woods are always burning there, I believe, in one place or another.  I kept on, and shot enough for food, and thus the second day passed.  That evening the air was quite suffocating, and it was as hot as an oven.  I struggled through the night, I don’t know how; and then on the third day made another start.  This third day was abominable.  The atmosphere was beastly hot; the sky was a dull yellow, and the birds seemed to have all disappeared.  As I went on it grew worse, but I found it was not because the fires were in front of me.  On the contrary, they were behind me, and were driving on so that they were gradually approaching nearer.  I could do my thirty miles a day even in that rough country, but the fires could do more.  At last I came into a track that was a little wider than the first one.  As I went on I met cattle which appeared stupefied.  Showers of dust were in the air; the atmosphere was worse than ever, and I never had such difficulty in my life in walking along.  I had to throw away my rifle and fishing-rod, and was just thinking of pitching my clothes after them, when suddenly I turned a bend in the path, and met a young girl full in the face.

“By Jove!  I swear I never was so astounded in my life.  I hurried up to her, and just began to ask where I was, when she interrupted me with a question of the same kind.  By-the-way, I forgot to say that she was on horseback.  The poor devil of a horse seemed to have had a deuced hard time of it too, for he was trembling from head to foot, though whether that arose from fatigue or fright I don’t know.  Perhaps it was both.

“Well, the girl was evidently very much alarmed.  She was awfully pale; she was a monstrous pretty girl too—­the prettiest by all odds I ever saw, and that’s saying a good deal.  By Jove!  Well, it turned out that she had been stopping in the back country for a month, at a house somewhere up the river, with her father.  Her father had gone down to Ottawa a week before, and was expected back on this day.  She had come out to meet him, and had lost her way.  She had been out for hours, and was completely bewildered.  She was also frightened at the fires, which now seemed to be all around us.  This she told me in a few words, and asked if I knew where the river was.

“Of course I knew no more than she did, and it needed only a few words from me to show her that I was as much in the dark as she was.  I began to question her, however, as to this river, for it struck me that in the present state of affairs a river would not be a bad thing to have near one.  In answer to my question she said that she had come upon this road from the woods on the left, and therefore it was evident that the river lay in that direction.