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new day dawned ominously, with wind in the west and acrid smoke making the early sun like a huge orange, which faded to a silver disc as it moved upward. Last evening Luke had ordered his secretary to bid Helen Foraker come to him and Rowe had returned from the telephone, chagrined and ill tempered.

"She won't come," he said hotly. "Wants to talk but insists on doing it at home."

"Wants me to come there, eh? Why?"

"Says she has to be there because of the fires all around." He flashed a covert look at the other. "I told her it was impossible for you to come."

"What in hell'd you say that for? Rowe, you're a damned fool. Wants me to come, does she? By God, I'll run that rabbit into her warren. Get a car! We'll be there in time to curl her hair for her!"

And so in the blue-gray dawn Rowe took the old man out of Pancake, toward the forest and the girl who had tossed restlessly through the night.

Since the day before yesterday she had been in turmoil. John Taylor, fighting for her, fighting with his fists, with high rage for her enemies in his face! It knocked her assurance. Could that fight have been a fraud? she asked herself, and for the moment hoped that it had been because such truth would save her from the humiliation of doubting that she had been justified in sending him from her house. If he fought for her now, she had been mistaken; she had 323