"
"Couldn't, heh?" returned Tom. "Dead tree, wasn't it?"
"Oh, yes."
"Hollow, too, of course?"
"I don't know."
"Might be hollow clear through its length," Tom explained
seriously. "The butt might be all rotted out. Just a tough
shell of a tree standing there, and 'twould be a fine chimney if
the fire was smouldering down at its old roots."
"Oh, Tom! I never thought of such a thing," gasped Nan.
"And you don't see the tree now?"
"Let me look! Let me look!" cried Nan, conscience-stricken.
In spite of the beating rain and wind she got to her knees, still
clinging to her big cousin, and then stood upon the broad tongue
of the wagon. The horses stood still with their heads down,
bearing the buffeting of the storm with the usual patience of
dumb beasts.
A sheer wall of water seemed to separate them from every object
out upon the open land. Behind them the bulk of the forest
loomed as another barrier. Nan had really never believed that
rain could fall so hard. It almost took her breath.
Moreover, what Tom said about the smoking tree began to trouble
the girl. She thought of the fire at Pale Lick, of which she had
received hints from several people. That awful conflagration, in
which she believed two children belonging to her uncle and aunt
had lost their lives, had started in the sawdust.
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