health, forbore to tell his wife of the indignities to which he had been subjected.
The settlers paid dearly for their three buckets of honey. Intent upon their rights, the men forgot to put out their fire. The next morning, before noon, an ominous column of dense smoke announced a bush-fire. The country was dry, and ere long the crackling of burning bushes startled the settlers.
Here again co-operation saved them. A thousand hands, all under discipline, moving like skirmishers in a long line on the edge of the fire, beat back the flames.
For the present the valley was safe.
Girls and children, like angels of comfort, brought the "squash," for which parched tongues were thirsting. Little ones wondered to see "how the water ran off daddy's face." For the moment there was breathing-space.
The fire, nevertheless, must be watched. It had a knack of creeping stealthily about, and leaping up where least expected.
Suddenly in the afternoon the wind changed with a wild gust. The slumbering fires leaped into furious life, tongues of flame sprang along dried trunks, and leaped from tree to tree overhead. Where only grass was burning before, the whole forest was ablaze now. A hundred feet high, clumps of scrub and undergrowth sent up a roaring column of fire, half-burnt leaves circling upward in a whirlwind, to be scattered far and wide. Scorched, the men fell back.
Human aid was powerless—save here, to sweep a road with bushes, or there, to burn back the grass on the side of the track that was threatened.
Suddenly Bill Bastion appeared. He was rushing
