Nobody knows where it will stop. Charlie's limits have
barely been scorched, but there's fire all along one side of them. A
change of wind--and there you are. Jack Fyfe's timber is burning in a
dozen places. We've been praying for rain and choking in the smoke for a
week."
Stella looked out the north window. From the ten-story height she could
see ships lying in the stream, vague hulks in the smoky pall that
shrouded the harbor.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
"It's devilish," Linda went on. "Like groping in the dark and being
afraid--for me. I've been married a month, and for ten days I've only
seen my husband at brief intervals when he comes down in the launch for
supplies, or to bring an injured man. And he doesn't tell me anything
except that we stand a fat chance of losing everything. I sit there at
the Springs, and look at that smoke wall hanging over the water, and
wonder what goes on up there. And at night there's the red glow, very
faint and far. That's all. I've been doing nursing at the hospital to
help out and to keep from brooding. I wouldn't be down here now, only
for a list of things the doctor needs, which he thought could be
obtained quicker if some one attended to it personally. I'm taking the
evening train back."
"I'm sorry," Stella repeated.
She said it rather mechanically. Her mind was spinning a thread, upon
which, strung like beads, slid all the manifold succession of things
that had happened since she came first to Roaring Lake.
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