"You know--" Bruce said to her, "that we are expecting an attack to-night?" The woman nodded, but didn't miss a stitch. No gleam of interest came into her eyes. Bruce's gaze fell to her work basket, and something glittered from its depth. Evidently Elmira had regained her knife. He went back to his chair beside Linda, and the two sat listening. They had never known a more quiet night. They listened in vain for the little night sounds that usually come stealing, so hushed and tremulous, from the forest. The noises that always, like feeble ghosts, dwell in a house at night--the little explosions of a scraping board or a banging shutter or perhaps a mouse, scratching in the walls--were all lacking too. And they both started, ever so slightly, when they heard a distant rumble of thunder. "It's going to storm," Linda told him. "Yes. A thunderstorm--rather unusual in the fall, isn't it?" "Almost unknown. It's growing cold too." They waited a breathless minute, then the thunder spoke again. It was immeasurably nearer. It was as if it had leaped toward them, through the darkness, with incredible speed in the minute that had intervened. The last echo of the sound was not dead when they heard it a third time. The storm swept toward them and increased in fury. On a distant hillside the strange file that was the Turners halted, then gathered around Simon. Already the lightning made vivid, white gashes in the sky and illumined--for a breathless instant--the long sweep of the ridge above them. "We'll make good targets in the lightning," Old Bill said. "Ride on," Simon ordered. "You know a man can't find a target in the hundredth of a second of a lightning flash. We're not going to turn back now." They rode on. Far away they heard the whine and roar of wind, and in a moment it was upon them. The forest was no longer silent. The peal of the thunder was almost continuous. The breaking of the storm seemed to rock the Folger house on its foundation. Both Linda and Bruce leaped to their feet; but they felt a little tingle of awe when they saw that old Elmira still sat sewing. It was as if the calm that dwelt in the Sentinel Pine outside had come down to abide in her. No force that the world possessed could ever take it from her. They heard the rumble and creak of the trees as the wind smote them, and the flame of the lamp danced wildly, filling the room with flickering shadows. Bruce straightened, the lines of his face setting deep. He glanced once more at the rifle in his hands. "Linda," he said, "put out that fire. If there's going to be an attack, we'd have a better chance if the room were in darkness. We can shoot through the door then." She obeyed at once, knocking the burning sticks apart and drenching them with water. They hissed, and steamed, but the noise of the storm almost effaced the sound. "Now the light?" Linda asked. "Yes. See where you are and have everything ready."