It had been a close, warm day, and as the afternoon wore away it grew
hotter and closer. There was a dead calm in the air, a threatening blackness
in the west that made the farmers think anxiously of their hay. Presently the
thunderheads ran together into big black clouds, which melted in turn into
molten masses of smoky orange, so that the heavens were like burnished brass.
Drivers whipped up their horses, and pedestrians hastened their steps.
Steve Webster decided not to run even the smallest risk of injuring so
precious a commodity as Doxy Morton by a shower of rain, so he drove into
a friend's yard, put up his horse, and waited till the storm should pass by.
Brad Gibson stooped to drink at a wayside brook, and as he bent over
the water he heard a low, murmuring, muttering sound that seemed to make
the earth tremble.
Then from hill to hill "leapt the live thunder."
Even the distant mountains seemed to have "found a tongue."
A zigzag chain of lightning flashed in the lurid sky,
and after an appreciable interval another peal, louder than
the first, and nearer.
Pages:
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104