Page 21 of 63 THE STEEPLE TRAP - Rollo at Play

"O, I will tell you what we will do; we will go and set our wigwam on fire!"

Rollo pointed to the wigwam. James and Lucy looked, and observed that it had been dried and browned in the sun, and Rollo thought it was no longer good for any thing as a wigwam, but would make a capital bonfire. He proposed that they should all go into it and sit down, and put a torch near the side so as to set it on fire, as if accidentally. They would go on talking as if they did not see it, and when the flames burst out, they would jump up and run out, crying, Fire! as people do when their houses get on fire.

Lucy said she should not like to do that. She should be afraid, she said. The sparks would fall down upon her and burn her. So the boys gave that plan up. Then James proposed that they should make believe that they were savages, going to set fire to a town. The wigwam was to be the town. They would take their torches, and all go and set it on fire in several places.

"But, then, I could not help," said Lucy, "for women do not go to war."

"O yes, they do, if they are savages," said James. "We play that we are savages, you see."

So it was all agreed to. They lighted their torches, and marched along, waving them in the air, until they came to the wigwam, and then they danced around it, singing and shouting as they set it on fire in many places on all sides. The flames spread rapidly, and flashed up high into the air, and soon there was nothing left of the poor wigwam but a few smoking and blackened sticks lying on the ground.

The children then crept along over the bridge, and went towards home. There were still great beds of burning embers remaining, and in some places the remains of logs and stumps were blazing brightly. And that night, when Rollo went to bed, he lay looking out the window which was towards the woods, and saw the light still shining among the trees, and the smoke slowly rising from the fires, and floating away through the air.

		"Nothing marks so much the solid advancement of a soul, as the view of one's wretchedness without anxiety and without discouragement." Francois de Fenel n