The storm seemed disposed to play cat-and-mouse with them. Hurrying over them in scurrying clouds darker and blacker growing, it only watched the hard-driven horses, nor so much as blew a breath upon them.... Mocking them now, it blew a puff, puff—and again was silence. As if to incite them to more amusing endeavours, along with another puff it threw at them a capful of giant rain-drops: and again drew off from the game to watch them run with fright.... Next came a brilliant sheet of lightning, revealing the cavernous furrows and writhing convulsions on the storm-god’s front—but not the _sound_ of thunder nor the jarring shock of the riving bolt—that would be carrying the joke with these scared and fleeing pigmies too far.... Another awful, mocking grimace of the storm, and then another. After each, the darkness coming like a down-flung blanket closer and closer to envelop the earth. And through it all, that awful silent stillness, broken so far only by the clatter of those sportive raindrops and the rustle of the contemptuous puffs.... But the giant hadn’t time to play with children: Crash, ROAR—the hurricane struck the hapless carriage! Shortman was driving wildly to reach a little farmhouse two miles yet ahead, the first hope of shelter. In the sheets of light his eyes swept the ill-kept road to fix his course, and in the inky blackness following he held to it in desperate and unslacking haste till another flash revealed it further to him. The thundering wind mauled and pummelled them. It shook and tore them. It shook and tore the very earth as they plunged fearfully forward through the terrible light and the awful darkness. In the deafening, blinding roar and rush, sight and hearing were pounded almost into insensibility and Helen tried to cry out to the swaying figures on the driver’s seat—but screamed instead in terror as calamity caught them. Crack! _Crash_! CRUSH!—and woman, men, horses and carriage were buried under a down-coming treetop. * * * * *