to teach and not to learn. For behind those eyes that might have been taken from one of Rafael's cherubim lay a brain that Danny had learned to respect.

"Fifteen minutes more. I'm givin' you," he said inaudibly; "then I'll be on my way, and you'll do your own squintin' and peekin'." But the Infant's fifteen minutes were cut to that many seconds—

Danny had been looking toward the south before he had turned to gaze at the Infant: his eyes came back to the same point to take up their reconnaissance. But now, where clear sky had made a blue back-drop for rugged peaks, was a line of black. And the line, while Danny watched in disbelief, moved like a smoky serpent: its head stretched out and out while from behind it there came the ominous line of black.

All this happened in a matter of seconds, and the moving head ceased at last to move; the line no longer grew. But, where it had been at first a thin mark of black, it changed now to billowing gray.

A

It was fifty miles away at least; but it showed clear and sharp. And the first gray had hardly bloomed from its black beginning before the long arm of Danny O'Rourke had swept the sleeping Infant to the floor, while, with the other hand, he swung an instrument of telescopic sights upon distant smoke.

He set it in careful focus—took a reading for distance—another for direction—and while he was doing it he was vaguely conscious of one single sharp flash in the sky above that far-off cloud. In his range-finder it showed once, like a glittering star; then it vanished, but the trained eye of O'Rourke observed its passage like a ray of light overhead.

The pink-faced youngster on the floor was still protesting sleepily when O'Rourke slammed down a switch and heard a voice answer promptly from an instrument on the wall. Danny shouted out his bearings on the fire:

"Thirty-nine-G! O'Rourke speaking for Morgan. Reporting fire on a wide front—bearing Two-O-Seven to Two-Four-Nine! And for God's sake, Chief, get a line on this quick. The whole thing shot up in a second—fifty miles of fire!"

Another voice broke in excitedly. "Station Fourteen-Fourteen-Fourteen!" The voice was stammering in evident confusion. "The whole earth has exploded—it's on fire now! I—I—"

The Chief's voice broke in with a quiet, "Bearing, please! Report your bearing, Fourteen!"

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