“Well,” said a pale Serena, “I feel like I did after I was baptized. The preacher, he was old man Diller, put his hand on my shoulder an’ said, ‘Love the Lord, my sister’; but I was so full o’ lovin’ everything and everybody I couldn’t think about the Lord. Do you reckon snakes have brothers and sisters that they know about? Think o’ that feller throwin’ away sech a chance to git even!” She could not stop talking any more than I could begin. “Let’s get to the top o’ the field where it’s cooler. It’s got so hot I’m afeard a shower’s comin’.” By the time we reached the top we knew that the shower was to be a heavy one. There was a cave over the ridge on the Mossy Creek side, where we could take shelter. But we would wait a little for what the heavens could show us. The doors of the sky were to be thrown open. There would be no reservation of magic. Earth knew it by the quick wind that pressed every grass-blade to the ground and made the strawberry-blossoms look like little white, whipped flags; and by the grove of tall, young poplars that bent like maidens, their interlaced branches resting, a silver roof, on their curved shoulders. The lightning rippled, and earth was a golden rose spreading her mountain petals. It was the signal for the assembling of the dragons. They came swelling from the west, pulling one great paw after another from behind the walls of distance and puffing black breath half across the sky. The lightning again, and this time earth was a golden butterfly under the paws of the dragons. Then the conflict began, the beasts mingled, and the sound of their bones massively breaking struck and shook the ground under our feet. A gray sea rose vertically on the horizon and marched upon us. We fled, blinded, to the cave, tearing off our aprons to protect our buckets. Even here Serena did not pant or gasp. “How dry it is!” she said, examining the berries. “They’re not hurt. My, you didn’t cap yourn!” “But I’d never fill my bucket if I stopped to cap them.” “You don’t stop. You leave the cap on the vine. It’s as quick done as not. Now it’ll take you longer to cap than it did to pick. O’ course you didn’t know. Some folks knows one thing and some another,” she added kindly. “Ain’t it a thick rain? But we got a good place. Some say this cave’s ha’nted, an’ won’t come anigh it. Uncle Sim Goforth died here, but he was a good man an’ wouldn’t harm nobody if he did come back.” “How did he happen to die here?” “They killed him. It was in time o’ the war way back. Folks are better now. They say they’re doin’ awful over the sea, but they’d never be so mean as they were to Uncle Sim. He hid here, an’ brought his wife an’ childern. But they found him.” “Was he a Unionist or Confederate?”