"Don't care if I do," said Pusey, throwing away the one he was smoking. They paused, a match scratched on a heel threw the ruddier lightning of its own tiny flame upon their faces and then their cigars glowed in the darkness, and left behind them a fragrance that no other cigar in Pekin could exhale, nor any perhaps, outside a certain cigar store in Pennsylvania Avenue, where Garwood owed a bill. "Let's go toward the river, Pusey," said Garwood. "I fancy it'll be cooler there." "Don't care if I do," said Pusey. * * * * * The storm had come at last; the long heat was broken. Overhead the thunder pealed up and down its whole wide diapason, booming now and then with new explosions, then rolling away in awful melody into some distant quarter of the broken heavens. The lightning crackled in long streams of fire that zigzagged down the black sky, reaching from heaven to earth, and in its after-glare the clouds that flew so low showed their gray scud. The rain fell with a dead incessant drumming on the earth, warm as new milk, and all green things stirred rapturously as they drank it in. Down on the banks of the Illinois River Garwood stood and looked on the dark waters. In the constant play of the lightning he saw the trees on the other shore bending their round heads to the wind; he could see even their green leaves distinct in the dazzling white light. He saw once some warm, earthly gleam shining in some window he would never know. He caught now and then the outline of some house-boat, rude dwelling of the river-people, stirring uneasily at its moorings. Once he saw the wild sails of one of the wind mills erected by the German settlers of that region, brought with them, as it were, from their home far across the seas, and once again in a glare more lasting and vivid than any other, he saw a telegraph pole lifting itself for an instant to his vision, spreading its arms, and it reminded him of a cross on a hill, some new Golgotha. He closed his eyes and looked that way no more.