that night while
Pearl was asleep the face of the heavens was darkened with
storm-clouds. Great rolling masses came up from the west, shot through
with flashes of lightening, and the heavy silence was more ominous than
the loudest thunder would have been. The wind began in the hills, gusty
and fitful at first, then bursting with violence over the plain below.
There was a cutting whine in it, like the whang of stretched steel,
fateful, deadly as the singing of bullets, chilling the farmer's heart,
for he knows it means hail.

Pearl woke and sat up in bed. The lightning flashed in the little
window, leaving the room as black as ink. She listened to the whistling
wind.

"It's the hail," she whispered delightedly. "I knew the Lord would find
a way to open the windy without me puttin' my fist through it--I'll
have a look at the clouds to see if they have that white edge on them.
No--I won't either--it isn't my put in. I'll just lave the Lord alone.
Nothin' makes me madder than when I promise Tommy or Mary or any of
them something and then have them frettin' all the time about whether
or not I'll get it done. I'd like to see the clouds though. I'll bet
they're a sight, just like what Camilla sings about:

Dark is His path on the wings o' the storm.

In the kitchen below the Motherwells gathered with pale faces. The
windows shook and rattled in their casings.

"Keep away from the stove, Tom," Mrs. Motherwell said, trembling.
"That's where the lightnin' strikes."

Tom's teeth were chattering.

"This'll fix the wheat that's standing, every--bit of it," Sam said. He
did not make it quite as strong as he intended. Something had taken the
profanity out of him.

"Hadn't you better go up and bring the kid down, ma?" Tom asked,
thinking of Pearl.

"Her!" his father said contemptuously. "She'll never hear it." The wind
suddenly ceased. Not a breath stirred, only a continuous glare of
lightning. Then crack! crack! crack! on the roof, on the windows,
everywhere, like bad boys throwing stones, heavier, harder, faster,
until it was one beating, thundering roar.

It lasted but a few minutes, though it seemed longer to those who
listened in terror in the kitchen.

The roar grew less and less and at last ceased altogether, and only a
gentle rain was falling.

Sam Motherwell sat without speaking, "You have cheated the Lord all
these years, and He has borne with you, trying to make you pay up
without harsh proceedings"--he f