CHAPTER IV.
THE YOUNG LIEUTENANT AND CATO.
Suddenly rose from the South a light, as in autumn the blood-red Moon climbs the crystal walls of heaven, and o'er the horizon, Titan-like, stretches its hundred hands upon mountain and meadow, Seizing the rocks and the rivers and piling huge shadows together.
-- LONGFELLOW.
From a long distance the conflagration had been visible, its light throwing a red glare far up in the sky, and revealing the huge clouds that swept forward like crimson avalanches, while the surrounding trees glowed as if their branches were burning hot.

Those nearest had their bark blistered and their leaves curled and scorched from the intense heat.

A conflagration at night, when viewed from a distance, always seems awful in its sublimity.

There is something calculated to inspire terror in the illuminated dome of the heavens and the onward sweep of this fearful element, when viewed in a civilized country; but it is only in the wilderness, away from the abode of man, that such an exhibition partakes of all the elements of grandeur and terror.
The solitary hunter, as he stood upon the banks of some lonely stream, leaned on his rifle and gazed with a beating heart at the brilliant redness that lit up so much of the sky.

The beasts in their lair turned their glowing eyeballs toward the dreadful illumination, and stood transfixed with fear until its light died away; while the dark face of the vengeful Shawnee grew darker and more terrible as he gazed upon this work of his own hands.