“Mebby a half, mebby less,” said the man.  “I tell you it burned like hell, and the worst of it came in the middle of the night with a wind behind it that blew a hurricane.  We’ve twenty acres cleared here, with the cabin in the center of it, an’ it singed my beard and burned her hair and scorched our hands, and my pigs died out there from the heat of it.  Mebby it’s a place to sleep in for the night you want, stranger?”

“No, I’m going on,” said Jolly Roger, the blood in his veins running with the chill of water.  “How far before I come to the end of fire?”

“Ten miles on.  It started this side of the next settlement.”

Jolly Roger drew back and the door closed, and standing on the railroad once more he saw the light go out and after that the occasional barking of the settler’s dog grew fainter and fainter behind them.

He felt a great weariness in his bones and body now.  With hope struck down the exhaustion of two nights and a day without sleep seized upon him and his feet plodded more and more slowly over the uneven ties of the road.  Even in his weariness he fought madly against the thought that Nada was dead and he repeated the word “impossible—­impossible” so often that it ran in sing-song through his brain.  And he could not keep away from him the white, thin face of the Missioner, who had promised on his faith In God to care for Nada, and who had passed the settler’s cabin alone.

Another two hours they went on and then came the first of the green timber.  Under the shelter of some balsams Jolly Roger found a resting place and there they waited for the break of dawn.  Peter stretched out and slept.  But Jolly Roger sat with his head and shoulders against the bole of a tree, and not until the light of the moon was driven away by the darkness that preceded dawn by an hour or two did his eyes close in restless slumber.  He was roused by the wakening twitter of birds and in the cold water of a creek that ran near he bathed his face and hands.  Peter wondered why there was no fire and no breakfast this morning.

The settlement was only a little way ahead and it was very early when they reached it.  People were still in their beds and out of only one chimney was smoke rising into the clear calm of the breaking day.  From this cabin a young man came, and stood for a moment after he had closed the door, yawning and stretching his arms and looking up to see what sort of promise the sky held for the day.  After that he went to a stable of logs, and Jolly Roger followed him there.

He was unlike the bearded settler, and nodded with a youthful smile of cheer.

“Good morning,” he said.  “You’re traveling early, and—­”

He looked more keenly as his eyes took in Jolly Roger’s boots and clothes, and the gray pallor in his face.

“Just get in?” he asked kindly.  “And—­from the burnt country?”

“Yes, from the burnt country.  I’ve been away a long time, and I’m trying to find out if my friends are among the living or the dead.  Did you ever hear of Father John, the Missioner at Cragg’s Ridge?”