But the back fire was extending itself, so as to get round them.  Every now and then Harry extended his own line, moving always forward toward Gangoil as he did so, though he and his men were always on Brownbie’s territory.  He had no doubt but that where he could succeed in destroying the grass for a breadth of forty or fifty yards he would starve out the inimical flames.  The trees and bushes without the herbage would not enable it to travel a yard.  Wherever the grass was burned down black to the soil, the fire would stop.  But should they, who were at work, once allow themselves to be outflanked, their exertions would be all in vain.  And then those wretches might light a dozen fires.  The work was so hard, so hot, and often so hopeless, that the unhappy young squatter was more than once tempted to bid his men desist and to return to his homestead.  The flames would not follow him there.  He could, at any rate, make that safe.  And then, when he had repudiated this feeling as unworthy of him, he began to consider within himself whether he would not do better for his property by taking his men with him on to his run, and endeavoring to drive his sheep out of danger.  But as he thought of all this, he still worked, still fired the grass, and still controlled the flames.  Presently he became aware of what seemed to him at first to be a third fire.  Through the trees, in the direction of the river, he could see the glimmering of low flames and the figures of men.  But it was soon apparent to him that these men were working in his cause, and that they, too, were burning the grass that would have fed the advancing flames.  At first he could not spare the minute which would be necessary to find out who was his friend, but, as they drew nearer, he knew the man.  It was the sugar planter from the mill and with him his foreman.

“We’ve been doing our best,” said Medlicot, “but we’ve been terribly afraid that the fire would slip away from us.”

“It’s the only thing,” said Harry, too much excited at the moment to ask questions as to the cause of Medlicot’s presence so far from his home at that time of the evening.  “It’s getting round us, I’m afraid, all the same.”

“I don’t know but it is.  It’s almost impossible to distinguish.  How hot the fire makes it!”

“Hot, indeed!” said Harry.  “It’s killing work for men, and then all for no good!  To think that men, creatures that call themselves men, should do such a thing as this!  It breaks one’s heart.”  He had paused as he spoke, leaning on the great battered bough which he held, but in an instant was at work with it again.  “Do you stay here, Mr. Medlicot, with the men, and I’ll go on beyond where you began.  If I find the fire growing down, I’ll shout, and they can come to me.”  So saying, he rushed on with a lighted bush torch in his band.

Suddenly he found himself confronted in the bush by a man on horseback, whom he at once recognized as Georgie Brownbie.  He forgot for a moment where he was. and began to question the reprobate as to his presence at that spot.