Page:Cornelia Meigs-The Pirate of Jasper Peak.djvu/211

 beyond hope. How they toiled, now getting a little the better of the fire, now driven back by a fresh outburst of flame, too excited either to  hope or to despair, feeling only one instinct—to  fight. Hours passed, they were drenched, blackened, their clothes singed, their hands and faces burned, they were exhausted; breathless, but at  last victorious.

Slowly the flames died down to smoldering ashes, the smoke cleared away, the last glowing  coal was stamped upon, the last spark went out. Hugh slid to the ground, finding his knees suddenly a little shaky, and stood looking happily into Dick’s blackened face.

“We did it,” he said; “Oscar’s got his cabin still.”

“Yes,” the other assented a trifle quaveringly; “I thought once or twice it was really gone.”

“And now,” went on Hugh, “where’s Hulda?”

Fires, it seemed, did not excite Hulda in the least, for she was discovered grazing peacefully at the edge of the clearing, her former agitation entirely vanished. Nicholas had followed the