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And that was truth; but little the engineer suspected how soon, or under what surpassingly strange circus stances, the girl and he were destined to behold once hty force

On the third day Stern set hi fire He had not even flint-and-steel now; nor any firearm Had he possessed a pistol he could have collected a little birch-bark, sought out a rotten pine-stued his weapon into the "punk," then blown the glow to a flaot a blaze But he lacked everything, and so was forced back to primitive man's one simplest resource--friction

As an assistant instructor in anthropology at Harvard University, he had now and then produced fire for his class of expectant students by using the Peruvian fire-drill; but even this si, a well-fors, neither could he fashion them without tools He had, therefore, to resort to the still o the Australian bush man, determined and persistent; but two days more had passed, and many blisters covered his palms ere--after innu strokes--the first tiny glow fell into the carefully scraped sawdust And it ith a fast-beating heart and treer one, then laid on his shredded strips of bark and blew again, and so at last, with a great up-welling triumph in his soul, beheld the flicker of a flame once more

Exhausted, he carefully fed that precious fire, while the girl clapped her hands with joy In a few laddened by the ruddy blaze of a camp-fire at the door of the lean-to, and for the first ti the branches of that primeval wood

"Now for soo hunting!"

That evening they sat for hours feeding their fire with deadfalls, listening to the trickle of the little spring and to the night sounds of the forest, watching the bats flicker a at the slow and solemn march of the stars beyond the leafy fretwork overhead Stern slept but little that night, in his anxiety to keep the fire fed; and -sticks a the vistas of the wilderness