When he had finished he did not go out to her immediately.

He stood staring down the hill with his eyebrows pinched together.

Now and then he lifted his hand unconsciously and pushed his heavy thatch of hair straight back from his forehead, where it began at once to lie wavy as of old.

He was feeling again the personal sense of tragedy and loss in that fire; cursing again his helplessness to check it or turn it aside from that beautiful stretch of timber over toward Genessee.
Now the shadows had crept down the slope again to where the fire glow beat them back while it crisped the balsam thicket.

Behind him the sun, sinking low over the crest of a far-off ridge, sent flaming banners across the smoke cloud.