Page:The New-Year's Bargain (1884).djvu/132

 "It was very little: a spoonful of water could have quenched it. But it had a soul which longed to expand and soar, and now its chance was come. Steadily and stealthily it ran to and fro: first a twig, then a bough, then a bush, received it. Day by day, day by day,—now it was a carpet, wonderful and red, glinting the ground; then a fountain, which threw sparks like spray into the air; next it climbed the trees, and hissed and shouted aloft with an angry voice; then, writhing like an angry snake, it twisted its folds round a fallen trunk, and strangled it in fierce embrace. When a week had gone by, the little spark gathered up its force, and prepared to travel. It had grown terrible. Whole rivers of water would not quench it now.

"Terrible, but full of splendor! Its crested neck reared above the forest; like a volcano its column of flame shot into the air; like an avalanche it poured in fiery flood over whole acres. Strange, fantastic patterns it traced as it went along, shapes of leaf and bough and glowing