The wind had gone down a little, but only a little, and the electrical flashes danced all around the horizon in magnificent display, sometimes far away, sometimes dazingly near, the darkness trebly deep between the intervals when the long sweep of flat lands lay in dazzling clearness, clean-cut in the washed air to the finest detail of stricken field and heaving woodland. A staggering flame clove earth and sky; sheets of light came following it, and a frightful uproar shook the house and rattled the casements, but over the crash of thunder Minnie heard her friend's loud scream and saw her spring back from the window with both hands, palm outward, pressed to her face. She leaped to her and threw her arms about her. “What is it?” “Look!” Helen dragged her to the window. “At the next flash--the fence beyond the meadow----” “What was it? What was it like?” The lightning flashed incessantly. Helen tried to point; her hand only jerked from side to side. “_Look_!” she cried. “I see nothing but the lightning,” Minnie answered, breathlessly. “Oh, the _fence_! The fence--and in the field!” “_Helen_! What was it _like_?” “Ah-ah!” she panted, “a long line of white--horrible white----” “What _like_?” Minnie turned from the window and caught the other's wrist in a fluttering clasp. “Minnie, Minnie! Like long white gowns and cowls crossing the fence.” Helen released her wrist, and put both hands on Minnie's cheeks, forcing her around to face the pane. “You must look--you must look,” she cried. “They wouldn't do it, they wouldn't--it _isn't_!” Minnie cried. “They couldn't come in the storm. They wouldn't do it in the pouring rain!” “Yes! Such things would mind the rain!” She burst into hysterical laughter, and Minnie, almost as unnerved, caught her about the waist. “They would mind the rain. They would fear a storm! Ha, ha, ha! Yes--yes! And I let him go--I let him go!” Pressing close together, shuddering, clasping each other's waists, the two girls peered out at the flickering landscape. “_Look_!” Up from the distant fence that bordered the northern side of Jones's field, a pale, pelted, flapping thing reared itself, poised, and seemed, just as the blackness came again, to drop to the ground. “Did you _see_?” But Minnie had thrown herself into a chair with a laugh of wild relief. “My darling girl!” she cried. “Not a line of white things--just one--Mr. Jones's old scarecrow! And we saw it blown down!” “No, no, no! I saw the others; they were in the field beyond. I saw them! When I looked the first time they were nearly all on the fence. This time we saw the last man crossing. Ah! I let him go alone!”