“No, no,” answered MacLean, with his hand upon her arm. “There is no sign that he has done so. It is not late; it is that heavy cloud above our heads that has so darkened the air. Perhaps he has not left Williamsburgh at all: perhaps, the storm threatening, he waits until to-morrow.” From the cloud above came a blinding light and a great crash of thunder,--the one so intense, the other so tremendous, that for a minute the two stood as if stunned. Then, “The tree!” cried Audrey. The great pine, blasted and afire, uprooted itself and fell from them like a reed that the wind has snapped. The thunder crash, and the din with which the tree met its fellows of the forest, bore them down, and finally struck the earth from which it came, seemed an alarum to waken all nature from its sleep. The thunder became incessant, and the wind suddenly arising the forest stretched itself and began to speak with no uncertain voice. MacLean took his seat again upon the log, but Audrey slipped into the road, and stood in the whirling dust, her arm raised above her eyes, looking for the horseman whose approach she could not hope to hear through the clamor of the storm. The wind lifted her long hair, and the rising dust half obscured her form, bent against the blast. On the lonesome road, in the partial light, she had the seeming of an apparition, a creature tossed like a ball from the surging forest. She had made herself a world, and she had become its product. In all her ways, to the day of her death, there was about her a touch of mirage, illusion, fantasy. The Highlander, imaginative like all his race, and a believer in things not of heaven nor of earth, thought of spirits of the glen and the shore. There was no rain as yet; only the hurly-burly of the forest, the white dust cloud, and the wild commotion overhead. Audrey turned to MacLean, watching her in silence. “He is coming!” she cried. “There is some one with him. Now, now he is safe!” CHAPTER XV HUGON SPEAKS HIS MIND MacLean sprang up from the log, and, joining her, saw indeed two horsemen galloping toward them, their heads bent and riding cloaks raised to shield them from the whirlwind of dust, dead leaves, and broken twigs. He knew Haward’s powerful steed Mirza, but the other horse was strange. The two rode fast. A moment, and they were splashing through the stream; another, and the horses, startled by Audrey’s cry and waving arms and by the sudden and violent check on the part of their riders, were rearing and curveting across the road. “What the devil!” cried one of the horsemen. “Imp or sprite, or whatever you are, look out! Haward, your horse will trample her!” But Audrey, with her hand on Mirza’s bridle, had no fears. Haward stared at her in amazement. “Child, what are you doing here? Angus, you too!” as the storekeeper advanced. “What rendezvous is this? Mirza, be quiet!”