Page:Cornelia Meigs-The Pirate of Jasper Peak.djvu/209

 It struck him so deeply that he dropped Hulda’s rope and turned to run up the hill. There was a growing misgiving in his heart that turned  swiftly to real terror as he sped along: it seemed  as though he would never reach the summit. Yet even while he was struggling up the slopes he began to see a red glow behind the trees that  seemed to grow brighter and brighter. In spite of a contrary wind there was a queer suffocating  smell in the air.

“Dick, Dick,” he called, “leave Hulda; come quickly.”

The loss of forty cows could be nothing beside the disaster before him, as he reached the hill-top. Scarlet flames licked across the roof of Oscar’s cabin, with dense clouds of smoke rolling  out toward the lake and with a single tall figure  moving swiftly across the clearing, black against  the brilliant blaze.

Dick always maintained that Jake shot twice at Hugh as he raced across the clearing, but if he  did so, Hugh was quite unconscious of the fact.