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.
