Bruno laughed outright at this characteristic anticlimax, while Professor Featherwit was obliged to smile, even while compelled to correct. “Tornado, please, nephew; not cyclone.” “Well, uncle Phaeton, have it your own way. Under either name, I fancy the thing-a-ma-jig would kick up a high old bobbery with a man's political economy should it chance to go bu'st right there! And, besides, when I was a weenty little fellow I was taught never to call a man a fool or a liar--” “Waldo!” sharply warned his brother, turning again. “So long as I knew myself to be in the wrong,” coolly finished the youngster, face grave, but eyes twinkling, as they turned towards his mistaken mentor. “What is it, my dear Bruno?” “There is one thing neither cyclone nor tornado could ever deprive you of, Kid, and that is--” “My beauty, wit, and good sense,--thanks, awfully! Nor you, my dear Bruno, although my inbred politeness forbids my explaining just why.” There was a queer-sounding chuckle as Professor Featherwit turned away, busying himself about that rude-built shed and shanty which sheltered the pride of his brain and the pet of his heart, while Bruno smiled indulgently as he took a few steps away from those stunted trees in order to gain a fairer view of the stormy heavens. Far away towards the northeast, rising above the distant hill, now showed an ugly-looking cloud-bank which almost certainly portended a storm of no ordinary dimensions. Had it first appeared in the opposite quarter of the horizon, Bruno would have felt a stronger interest in the clouds, knowing as he did that the miscalled “cyclone” almost invariably finds birth in the southwest. Then, too, nearly all the other symptoms were noticeable,--the close, “muggy” atmosphere; the deathlike stillness; the lack of oxygen in the air, causing one to breathe more rapidly, yet with far less satisfying results than usual. Even as Bruno gazed, those heavy cloud-banks changed, both in shape and in colour, taking on a peculiar greenish lustre which only too accurately forebodes hail of no ordinary force. His cry to this effect brought the professor forth from the shed-like shanty, while Waldo roused up sufficiently to speak: “To say nothing of yonder formation way out over the salty drink, my worthy friends, who intimated that a cyclone was born at sea?” Professor Featherwit frowned a bit as his keen little rat-like eyes turned towards that quarter of the heavens; but the frown was not for Waldo, nor for his slightly irreverent speech. Where but a few minutes before there had been only a few light clouds in sight, was now a heavy bank of remarkable shape, its crest a straight line as though marked by an enormous ruler, while the lower edge was broken into sharp points and irregular sections, the whole seeming to float upon a low sea of grayish copper. “Well, well, that looks ugly, decidedly ugly, I must confess,” the wiry little professor spoke, after that keen scrutiny.