and segments of dreams, the girl was present.  It was strange that in all of them she should be his wife.  And it was strange that the big woods and the deep snows played no part in them.  He was back home.  And Celie was with him.  Once they went for wildflowers and were caught in a thunderstorm, and ran to an old and disused barn in the center of a field for shelter.  He could feel Celie trembling against him, and he was stroking her hair as the thunder crashed over them and the lightning filled her eyes with fear.  After that there came to him a vision of early autumn nights when they went corn-roasting, with other young people.  He had always been afflicted with a slight nasal trouble, and smoke irritated him.  It set him sneezing, and kept him dodging about the fire, and Celie was laughing as the smoke persisted in following him about, like a young scamp of a boy bent on tormenting him.  The smoke was unusually persistent on this particular night, until at last the laughter went out of the girl’s face, and she ran into his arms and covered his eyes with her soft hands.  Restlessly he tossed in his bunk, and buried his face in the blanket that answered for a pillow.  The smoke reached him; even there, and he sneezed chokingly.  In that instant Celie’s face disappeared.  He sneezed again—­and awoke.

In that moment his dazed senses adjusted themselves.  The cabin was full of smoke.  It partly blinded him, but through it he could see tongues of fire shooting toward the ceiling.  He heard then the crackling of burning pitch—­a dull and consuming roar, and with a stifled cry he leaped from his bunk and stood on his feet.  Dazed by the smoke and flame, he saw that there was not the hundredth part of a second to lose.  Shouting Celie’s name he ran to her door, where the fire was already beginning to shut him out.  His first cry had awakened her and she was facing the lurid glow of the flame as he rushed in.  Almost before she could comprehend what was happening he had wrapped one of the heavy bear skins about her and had swept her into his arms.  With her face crushed against his breast he lowered his head and dashed back into the fiery holocaust of the outer room.  The cabin, with its pitch-filled logs, was like a box made of tinder, and a score of men could not have beat out the fire that was raging now.  The wind beating from the west had kept it from reaching the door opening into the corral, but the pitch was hissing and smoking at the threshold as Philip plunged through the blinding pall and fumbled for the latch.

Not ten seconds too soon did he stagger with his burden out into the night.  As the wind drove in through the open door the flames seemed to burst in a sudden explosion and the cabin was a seething snarl of flame.  It burst through the window and out of the chimney and Philip’s path to the open gate was illumined by a fiery glow.  Not until he had passed beyond the stockade to the edge of the forest did he stop