She did not even answer; the situation seemed to her so wholly hopeless.

He acted, then, without further question.  Hastily throwing the loop of his gun over his shoulder, he crooked one arm beneath her much-astonished knees, clasped another tight about her waist, and started for the fire with a determined spring.

“No, no; not there!” she screamed, astonished, terrified, and yet, withal, delighted by the unexpected hardness of the muscles in the arms which held her, the unexpected spring in the apparently not overburdened limbs which bore them up, the unexpected nerve, determination of the man’s initiative.

This “foreigner,” it seemed, was not so weak, was not so namby-pamby as his class had been described to be.  She did not struggle in the circling arms, she only made an explanation.

“That’s hard wood, burnin’ there,” said she.  “Burnin’ hard wood’s harder to break through an’ hotter, too.  Try some place where it’s pine....  But you can’t never do it!”

“Where?” said he.  “Show me!  You know, I don’t.”

“Well—­over thar,” she said, and indicated, with a pointing hand, the place in the encircling conflagration where passage seemed least hopeless.

At that moment fire blazed high there, but her knowing eye told her that it was largely flaring needles, brittle twigs, and easily dissipated cones which fed it.

A few great springs, such as she now felt that the quivering, eager limbs which held her, were possessed of the ability to make, might take them through this flimsiest spot in the terrible barricade.  The crackling, burning branches of the dead pine-tops would be likely to give way before them, not to trip them up, as oak would, to thrust them, falling, on the bed of glowing coals fast forming on the ground.

“Over thar,” said she, again.  “I reckon that’s the best place—­but you cain’t—­”

With the new respect the knowledge of his trained and ready muscles brought to her, arose in her a towering admiration of him.  When she first had seen him, there beside the pool, she definitely had liked him; while they had delved into the mysteries of the alphabet upon the log his patient, willing, helpful kindness had increased her prepossession in his favor.  It was only when, after disaster had so swiftly, so unexpectedly, descended on them and she had compared his body, made apparently more slender in comparison to the rude-limbed mountaineers she knew than it was really by tight-fitting knickerbockers and golf-stockings and its well-cut shooting-jacket, that she had lost confidence in him.  But now his muscles, closing round her, seemed like thews of steel.  She had never heard of athletes, she did not dream that muscle-building is a part of modern education—­that alertness on the baseball, polo, football fields, count quite as much, at least in college popularity, as ready tongues and agile wits.  The last fibres of destroyed respect for him rebuilt themselves upon the minute.  Her confidence returned completely in a sudden flash—­quicker than the magic leapings of the fire about them.  She knew that he would take her through to safety.