On the day before camp was broken, the Mistress had spied, from the eyrie heights of the knoll, a grim line of haze far to southward; and a lesser smoke-smear to the west.

And the night sky, on two horizons, had been faintly lurid.
The campers had noted these phenomena, with sorrow.

For, each wraithlike smoke-swirl meant the death of tree and shrub.

Lad noted the smudges as distinctly as did they.

Indeed, to his canine nostrils, the chill autumn air brought the faint reek of wood-smoke; an odor much too elusive, at that distance, for humans to smell.