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Well, to come to the end, as soon as Julia and her dude got to the campground she lit out of his buggy and made a bee-line to whar me and Carrie was setting under the trees waiting for the first hymn. She stopped right square in front of me as mad as a wet hen. "'What did you mean by throwing dust on us? she asked, as red as a beet, her eyes flashing sparks.
Some one was coming through from the opposite side some one who smelt very much worse than any pig. Next instant both black rats had gone off together like sparks if ever sparks were black and the brown rat, coming through the hole, wondered what on earth had happened. Then he sniffed at their trail, tried, but found it impossible, to follow, and passed on.
A number of fine logs, sufficient to last throughout the night had been heaped upon the hearth, and these, crackling and fizzing, and emitting sparks in all the burly of a hickory wood-fire, gave promise of a night of comparative comfort. But the Aid-de-Camp was by no means disposed to humour him in his fancy.
The roar of the fire waxed louder as one listened to it: a deep persistent energetic roar, as of a sea climbing over a land its time had come to devour. Suddenly a curtain of smoke swept down and obliterated the scene, conveying a sense of respite, challenging the memory, although a moment later it was shot with a million sparks.
Soon the red forked flames began to climb her masts, and her spars glowed with light; with a crash her mainmast fell, carrying the foremast with it, and sending a shower of sparks high in the air; her stout sides seemed to burst open; and what was a stately ship was now a blackened hulk, the rising sea breaking in white-caps over it, and at last, with a surge and wallow, sinking out of sight."
"I am more and more impressed;" he wrote a friend a few weeks later, "I am more and more impressed with the importance of 'working whilst the day lasts. If 'we all do fade as a leaf, if we are 'as the sparks that fly upward, if the billows of time are swiftly removing the sandy foundation of our life, what we intend to do for the captive, and for our country, and for the subjugation of a hostile world, must be done quickly.
"I I knew it," panted Mark, "and stopped the train just in time. Look at the floor and sweep away any sparks that are left. I I can't now. Mind the powder doesn't go off."
We descended, and began to cross the remainder of the plain, but even then our feet struck up sparks from the yet smouldering ashes, and light clouds of smoke rose up continually, circling round our heads till they were dispersed in the clear atmosphere. "Desolate, dismal, and barren looked the country through which we journeyed on the following day.
"Never mind, Max, my boy, we shall soon be all right," replied my friend, as one of the sparks at last caught on the tinder. In a few seconds the spark was blown into a blaze, and placed in the midst of a handful of dry moss and thin chips. This was applied to some dry twigs under our piled-up logs, and a vivid tongue of flame shot upward. Blessed fire! Marvellous light!
Suffice it to say that after a week or two the effervescing began to systematise, and the family became a living and complex electrical machine, whose sympathetic poles drew and stuck together, while the antagonistic poles kept up a steady discharge of sparks. Then there arose a gale which quieted the machine a little, and checked the sparkling flow of wit and humour.
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