Once, one hot afternoon, the air took on an oppressive density, the wind died away almost to a calm, blowing fitfully from the south, while in the far west a vast dome of inky clouds, silent and portentous, uplifted, filling the horizon, swelling like a great bubble, yet seeming to have the weight of a mountain range in its mass. The birds, bees, and all insects, hitherto vocal, suddenly sank into silence, as if awed by the first deep mutter of the storm. The mercury is touching one hundred degrees in the shade. All hands hasten to get the hay in order, that it may shed rain. They hurry without haste, as only adept workmen can. They roll up the windrows by getting fork and shoulder under one end, tumbling it over and over endwise, till it is large enough; then go back for the scatterings, which are placed, with a deft turn of the fork, on the top to cap the pile. The boys laugh and shout as they race across the field. Every man is wet to the skin with sweat; hats are flung aside; Lincoln, on the rake, puts his horse to the trot. The feeling of the struggle, of racing with the thunder, exalts him. Nearer and nearer comes the storm, silent no longer. The clouds are breaking up. The boys stop to listen. Far away is heard the low, steady, crescendo, grim roar; intermixed with crashing thunderbolts, the rain streams aslant, but there is not yet a breath of air from the west; the storm wind is still far away; the toads in the marsh, and the fearless king-bird, alone cry out in the ominous gloom cast by the rolling clouds of the tempest. "Look out! here it comes!" calls the boss. The black cloud melts to form the gray veil of the falling rain, which blots out the plain as it sweeps on. Now it strikes the corn-field, sending a tidal wave rushing across it. Now it reaches the wind-break, and the spire-like poplars bow humbly to it. Now it touches the hay-field, and the caps of the cocks go flying; the long grass streams in the wind like a woman's hair. In an instant the day's work is undone and the hay is opened to the drenching rain. As all hands rush for the house, the roaring tempest rides upon them like a regiment of demon cavalry. The lightning breaks forth from the blinding gray clouds of rain. As Lincoln looks up he sees the streams of fire go rushing across the sky like the branching of great red trees. A moment more, and the solid sheets of water fall upon the landscape, shutting it from view, and the thunder crashes out, sharp and splitting, in the near distance, to go deepening and bellowing off down the illimitable spaces of the sky and plain, enlarging, as it goes, like the rumor of war.