At once the shadow of an impending fear took him in grip. The earth, he could have thought, lay rigid in a dry fever of terror. The shade he had so much coveted fell around him like a living shroud. He had always an unreasonable dread of what lay behind the curtain of trunks before him. He moved on purposeless and prickling with apprehension. Had it not been for very shame he would have turned and fled for the open, daring any meeting in the village rather than this nameless dead solitude. But he forced himself to proceed, mentally assigning himself for goal that old withered leviathan in the clearing that was the centre of some strange associations. He had been curious long ago, he admitted, to look upon this monster since the legend of divinity had attached to it. He would go so far now and satisfy his eyes, then turn and make for air and light. Suddenly he fancied he heard far away the rumble of the receding waggon-wheels. A numb stillness succeeded. The earth seemed to breathe its last, and a napkin of cloud was softly flung over the dead face of it. The lungs of the day fell in; a few large bitter drops slipped from the closed lids of the heavens. Straight, and in a moment, Ned sprang alert to a sense of peril. This ominous oppressiveness was nothing but the forereach of a swiftly advancing thunderstorm--but the trees and every green spire toppling into cloud an invitation to its own destruction! He must race for cover--and whither? The little hut beyond the clearing! It presented itself to him in a flash. He set off running. The very enforced action was a tonic to his nerves. As he sped, the darkness gathered around him deep and deeper. He ran in a livid twilight. Then on the quicker beat of a pulse the wood was torn with fire from hem to hem. He was dazzled, half-shocked to a pause for an instant; but there had been a panic sound to drive him forward again directly--a huge tearing noise within the monstrous slam that had trodden upon the heels of the blaze. He could only guess what this portended. At the very first explosion a tree of the forest had been struck and riven. Now he scurried so fast that the breath sobbed a little in his throat. He had a feeling that the Force was dodging him, heading him off from reach of shelter. Not a soul did he meet, but formless shadows seemed to cry him on from deep to lonelier deep of the maze. Then again a sudden glare took him in the face like a whip; and at once the Furies of the storm burst from restraint and danced upon the woods in fire and water, rehearsing the very carmagnole of the Terror.