He seemed of mammoth proportions as he lurched toward her. His head was lowered, and his great hoofs pounded the ground like trip-hammers. Closer! Closer! He was not twenty feet away. His big, crazy eyes seemed to look straight into hers. Closer! Closer!--Then he changed his course a trifle. In an instant he had passed her like a great fury. Others were only a few feet behind him, and back of them was the compact mass of the herd. She screamed louder and redoubled her waving. The thunder in the heavens, and the thunder of the hoofs, drowned her voice so that she could not even hear it herself. A dozen cattle passed her. Fifty cattle passed her. She was in the midst of the herd which seemed to make a solid, living wall on each side of her. The earth trembled beneath the hammering of the hoofs. Her throat seemed ready to burst, and she was certain that no sound came from her lips. It seemed a long time since that first one had plunged toward her, but still the maddened beasts advanced with lowered heads and lunging bodies. They did not seem to turn aside, and each instant she expected to be struck down and trampled under their feet. She could not even try to scream any longer, but still she waved the skirts. At last, slowly, she saw that the herd was thinning. Short gaps began to appear between the animals. She knew that the herd had nearly passed. Then the living walls on each side melted away behind her, and only stragglers were left. Then these, too, were gone. The stampeding herd had passed her, and she was still alive. She turned dizzily toward Scylla. The little invalid--the cripple--was standing straight up, close behind her. For a second Martha doubted her eyes. The storm still raged, and she thought it was a vagary of the lightning. She held her hands out, though, and convinced herself that it was true. Scylla was standing on her feet, for the first time in many years. The two girls threw their arms around each other, and sank to their knees on the prairie. As they said a prayer of thanks together, the uneven glare of the lightning, which had kept up almost uninterruptedly ever since a few seconds before the cattle reached them, died away. One or two feeble flashes followed, and then the storm had passed. Martha took Scylla's face between her hands and kissed her. Then she said: "Wasn't it awful?" "Oh, Martha," Scylla answered, "I thought every second that we'd be killed, but there you stood as brave as a lion, and waved those dresses right in the faces of the cattle. You saved both our lives. I lay here on the ground for a minute after you took my skirt, and then I got up." "You _got up_, Scylla! How could you, all alone?"