"That's it!"
"You sing too."
So, going home together hand in hand, they sang, and through the wood and over the still, evening water there echoed the voice of their happiness.
They married six weeks later, at the old house at St. Florentin. Bennet and Julia and their mother came up for the service, after which Barney and Ethel went west. Agnes returned to Chicago soon after the Cullens went back; and old Sarah Cullen remained at St. Florentin alone with the Indians until July when, after weeks of drought, the forest fires, which had rested for many years, swept through the tinder-dry slashings and second growth of the peninsula and burned the old house to the ground. So Sarah retreated, perforce, to the home of her older son to pray and wait.
Throughout the western forests also drought prevailed that summer; and in the great tracts of tall, virgin pine of Idaho and Montana blazed timber fires such as had not been seen in Michigan for forty years. They took everything before them, brush and crown, and camps and settlements in their paths.
Here and there the flames suddenly burst on two sides of little villages, all but cutting off escape; and in one of these places—so the telegraphed news related—a huge old man, strange to the settlers but dominating in manner and plainly expert in ways of fighting forest fire, placed himself in command and turned away the flames from the town. He himself worked tirelessly in the fire lines with axe and spade; and when word came that two of his men were missing and probably had fallen and were lying overcome by smoke and gases, close in front
