The storm seemed an age in coming, and at last I saw the whirling center would pass far enough away not to carry me up in its funnel; this I could tell by the noise among the trees. It was terrible; what majestic wrenchings were going on! How the great forest giants struggled, only to be torn up by the roots or twisted into splinters and hurled furiously away! And the rushing of the wind—what horrors it contained—a demon freed and wreaking his vengeance for having been imprisoned—how he shrieked in his mad delirium! How he howled and hissed in his tantrum! It nearly froze the marrow in my bones. A strong current of air was rushing by me, and growing steadily stronger each second. I should be picked up by it before the end and whirled—the Lord knew where—but I prayed I should not be taken out of the path. I felt the first real gush of the tearing wind. It was entering my pocket. What would it do? I did not have long to wait for my answer, brought by the wind itself. The pressure it exerted soon became almost unbearable, and while the tension was at its height a vivid flash of lightning showed me that the trees in my path were being forced apart, and even now the slit was wide enough for me to spring through. No sooner thought than done. And all I had to do was to loosen my grip on the tree to which I had been holding and be blown through by the rushing wind. The blast that took me through was the last throe in that particular vicinity. I was lying on the ground, much jarred and bruised, but decidedly happy, for the path lay before, waiting for my feet. So I gave thanks to the storm and proceeded to finish my nap, for it was now dark, and I was completely fagged. When the dawn made things again clear I could not refrain from inspecting the place through which I had come. Now, there are times in every man’s life when he feels he has been a sad mistake; that when his anatomical machine was assembled it was not put together right; that there is a screw loose somewhere in his being. And so it then seemed to me as I gazed at the slot between the trees. There was but one excuse for me, my brains must have been lost in the last episode, or I had lost the combination to my thought-maker. There before my eyes stood the monument of my stupidity; there was the proof I was nothing but a streaked ninnyhammer of the rankest breed. There stood the slot as my accuser, the witness whose testimony should send me to a home for incurable imbeciles. While it was true that for twenty-five or fifty feet it was impossible for me to get between the trees, yet it was also true that by the distance of one hundred feet there was ample space for my passage. It would have taken time, of course, to have climbed up and down between each pair of trees. Ah, greater evidence of my moon-eyed condition. By climbing to the limbs I might have run like a squirrel from one tree to another the entire distance.