fast to the dock, and the Camp Fire Girls streamed off, lining up on the dock. On the steamer the girls from Camp Halsted—all but Gladys Cooper, who had not made the trip—lined up, leaning over the rail.

“We’ll see them off as the boat goes right back again,” said Eleanor. “And let’s give them the Wo-he-lo cheer for good-bye, girls.”

So their voices rose on the quiet air as the steamer’s whistle shrieked, and she began to pull out.

“Good-bye! Good luck!” cried Marcia and all the Halsted girls. “And come back whenever you can! We’ll have a mighty different sort of welcome for you next time!”

“Good-bye! And thank you ever so much for the blankets!” called the Camp Fire Girls.

CHAPTER III
THE WORK OF THE FIRE

At Cranford began the road which the Camp Fire Girls were to follow through Indian Notch, the gap between the two big mountains, Mount Grant and Mount Sherman. Then they were to travel easily toward the seashore, since the Manasquan Camp Fire, ever since it had been organized, had spent a certain length of time each summer by the sea.

The Village of Cranford had been saved from the fire only by a shift of the wind. The woods to the west and the north had been burning briskly for several days, and every able-bodied man in the village had been out, day and night, with little food and less rest, trying to turn off the fire. In spite of all their efforts, however, they would have failed in their task if the change in the weather had not come to their aid. As a consequence, everyone in the village, naturally enough, was still talking about the fire.

“It isn’t often that a village in this part of the country has such a narrow escape,” said Eleanor, looking around. “See, girls, you can see for yourselves how close they were to having to turn and run from the fire.”

“It looks as if some of the houses here had actually been on fire,” said Dolly, as they passed into the outskirts of the village.

“I expect they were. You see, the wind was very high just before the shift came, and it would carry sparks and blazing branches. It’s been a very hot, dry summer, too, and so all the wooden houses were ready to catch fire. The paint was dry and blistered. They probably had to watch these houses very carefully, to be ready to put out a fire the minute it started.”

“It didn’t look so bad from our side of the lake, though, did it?”

“The smoke hid the things that were really dangerous from us, but here they could see all right. I’ll bet that before another summer comes around they’ll be in a position to laugh at a fire.”

“How do you mean? Is there anything they can do to protect themselves—before a fire starts, I mean?”

“That’s the time to protect themselves. When people wait until the fire has actually begun to burn, it’s almost impossible for them to check it. It would have been this time, if the wind had blown for a few hours longer the way it was doing when the fire started.”

“But what can they do?”

“They can have a cleared space between the town and the forest, for one thing, with a lot of brush growing there, if they want to keep that. Then, if a fire starts, they can set the brush afire, and make a back fire, so that the big fire will be checked by the little one. The fire has to have something to feed on, you see, and if it comes to a cleared space that’s fairly wide, it can’t get any further.

“Oh, a cleared space like that doesn’t mean that the village could go to sleep and feel safe! But it’s a lot easier to fight the fire then. All the men in town could line up, with beaters and plenty of water, and as soon as sparks started a fire on their side of the clearing, they could put it out before it could get beyond control.”

“Oh, I see! And being able to see the fire as soon as it started, they wouldn’t have half so much trouble fighting it as if they had to be after the really big blaze.”

“Yes. The fire problem in places like this seems very dreadful, but when the conditions are as good as they are here, with plenty of water, all that’s needed is a little forethought. It’s different in some of the lumber towns out west, because there the fires get such a terrific start that they would jump any sort of a clearing, and the only thing to do when a fire gets within a certain distance of a town is for the people who live in the town to run.”

Soon the road began to pass between desolate stretches of woods, where the fire had raged at its hottest. Here the ground on each side of the road was covered with smoking ashes, and blackened stumps stood up from the barren, burnt ground.

“It looks like a big graveyard, with those stumps for headstones,” said Dolly, with a shudder.

“It is a little like that,” said Eleanor, with a sigh. “But if you came here next year you wouldn’t know the place. All that ash will fertilize the ground, and it will all be green. The stumps will still be there, but a great new growth will be beginning to push out. Of course it will be years and years before it’s real forest again, but nature isn’t dead, though it looks so. There’s life underneath all that waste and desolation, and it will soon spring up again.”

“I hope we’ll get out of this burned country soon,” said Dolly. “I think it’s as gloomy and depressing as it can be. I’d like to have seen this road before the fire—it must have been beautiful.”

“It certainly was, Dolly. And all this won’t last for many miles. We really ought to stop pretty soon to eat our dinner. What do you say, girls? Would you like to wait, and press on until we come to a more cheerful spot, where the trees aren’t all burnt?”

“Yes, oh, yes!” cried Margery Burton. “I think that would be ever so much nicer! Suppose we are a little hungry before we get our dinner? We can stand that for once.”

“I think we’ll enjoy our meal more. So we’ll keep on, then, if the rest of you feel the same way.”

Not a voice dissented from that proposition, either. Dolly was not the only one who was saddened by the picture of desolation through which they were passing. The road, of course, was deep in dust and ashes, and the air, still filled with the smoke that rose from the smouldering woods, was heavy and pungent, so that eyes were watery, and there was a good deal of coughing and sneezing.

“It’s a lucky thing there weren’t any houses along here, isn’t it?” said Margery. “I don’t see how they could possibly have been saved, do you, Miss Eleanor?”

“There’s no way that they could have saved them, unless, perhaps, by having a lot of city fire engines, and keeping them completely covered with water on all sides while the fire was burning. They call that a water blanket, but of course there’s no way that they could manage that up here.”

“What do you suppose started this fire, Miss Eleanor?”

“No one will ever know. Perhaps someone was walking in the woods, and threw a lighted cigar or cigarette in a pile of dry leaves. Perhaps some party of campers left their camp without being sure that their fire was out.”

“Just think of it—that all the trouble could be started by a little thing like that! It makes you realize what a good thing it is that we have to be careful never to leave a single spark behind when we’re leaving a fire, doesn’t it?”