Meanwhile Barbara was standing at the mouth of the cave. She looked a very solitary being in the midst of that tremendous gathering of the tempest. The forces which nature had wakened were so overpowering and mysterious, they could have swept her away, if she had exposed herself to them, like a withered leaf. Everything around her was magnified by the lightning--the cliffs were towers, the bushes distorted creatures, the rocks--fragments from the heights above, which former storms had thrown about like pebbles--loomed in the darkness as big as elephants or those prehistoric beasts, the mammoths that Timothy Hadwin had told her about. Behind her the mouth of the cave yawned like a black mouth waiting to swallow her up. The dogs crept close to her side, the sheep, too, seemed to be reassured by her presence. Could they have spoken they might have uttered the words said by the Red-skins to Montcalm: "_It is when we look into your eyes that we see the greatness of the pinetree and the fire of the eagle._" The lightning played off its fire-works against the inky clouds; the thunder crashed like the wheels of a great car hurtling down Thundergay. The dales and ravines rolled and reverberated. Every pinnacle spat fire, every cliff gave back the sound in twofold, threefold, even sevenfold echoes. Still Barbara stood at the mouth of the cave and watched. She had not seen a storm like this before--though thunderstorms were common occurrences among the fells. She thought it was like the convulsion which must have attended the making of the earth. She could imagine that a god was moving within the cloud, striking upon his anvil with a great hammer, and forging bands for a new world. The lightning and thunder ceased. The quietness was more oppressive than the noise had been. A waterfall rang startlingly clear like a call. The darkness increased with the silence. All the nearer objects sank into a thick atmosphere. Then came the rain. It did not fall in drops, but in a flood. It drummed upon the grass and rocks; it sounded like an army coming down the mountain side and passing along the dale. Every well-head, that had been dry for weeks, broke into clamouring; Thundergay gushed with fountains; the fountains gathered; they rushed along like mad horses. CHAPTER XII SIX WHITE HORSES AND A COACH The cow-house was dim, like night, when a cloudy moon is shining, although the clock had just struck four. Through a small window the grey light stole and vaguely lit up the horned heads of the cattle. It showed Jan Straw sitting in a corner. Rain beat on the roof like the trampling of heavy feet; it fell in a sheet from the eaves, and spouted like a waterfall from the drip-stone; the noise of the beck increased until it became a roar.