About five the storm burst in riotous elements. For an hour before that the strain had been almost unbearable. The forked flashes of lightning, the dry growl of the thunder had approached nearer and nearer, and all the earth seemed to pause, finger on lip, for the catastrophe. Now and then a few rain-drops as big as pennies fell down upon the pavements, and vanished again like a breath on a frosty morning on the hot, thirsty stones. Then suddenly the heavens burst, a ribbon of blue fire leaped downward from the zenith, and the noise of the thunder was as if the sky had cracked. One woman half raised herself in bed and cried, “Lord, have mercy!” but at the end of the words came a sound as if a thousand snakes had hissed in the street outside, the blessed whisper of rain, and all was changed. The girl who was so ill moved slightly and laid one hand outside the bed-clothes; the woman who had cried aloud lay back in bed smiling; Jeannie felt a pulse rise in her throat and subside again, and outside the hiss of the snakes changed to a drumming on the roof, which got gradually louder and more insistent. Perpendicularly it fell, like rods of steel, and as the seconds added themselves into minutes the roofs, drains, and gutter-pipes began to gurgle and chuckle to themselves, and never was there a song so sweet. These guttural sounds grew ever fuller, and in a few minutes, with a great splash, they choked and overflowed in bubbling laughter. Again and yet again the lightning tore a path through the clouds, and at each reverberation in the baptism of fire the earth grew regenerate and young. The hot, stifling smell of the last six weeks turned to something infinitely fresh and vigorous, and down the pavements and over the roads began to flow the flushing streams.