THE CAMP-FIRE 



The camp-fire gives an expression to 

 the human face that it bears in no other 

 light, a vague intentness, an absorption 

 in nothing tangible ; and yet not a far- 

 away look, for it is focused on the flame 

 that now licks a fresh morsel of wood, 

 now laps the empty air ; or it is fixed 

 on the shifting glow of embers, whose 

 blushes flush or fade under their ashen 

 veil. It is not the gaze of one who looks 

 past everything at nothing, or at the 

 stars or the mountains or the far-away 

 sea-horizon ; but it is centred on and 

 revealed only by the camp-fire. You 

 wonder what the gazer beholds the 

 past, the future, or something that is 

 neither ; and the uncertain answer you 

 can only get by your own questioning of 

 the flickering blaze. 



As the outers gather around this 

 cheerful centre their lips exhale stories 

 of adventure by field and flood, as natu- 

 rally as the burning fuel does smoke and 

 sparks, and in that engendering warmth, 

 no fish caught or lost, no buck killed 

 or missed, suffers shrinkage in size or 

 weight, no peril is lessened, no tale shorn 

 104 



