ppers among the drooping, withered sunflowers beside the
road as the travelers passed.

"I'm goin' to see if I can make it to town before she hits," said Joe,
lashing out with his whip. "Lordy! ain't it a comin'!"

"I think I'll ride on," said Morgan, feeling a natural desire for
shelter against that grim-faced storm.

The oncoming cloud had swept its flank across the sun before Morgan rode
into town, and in the purple shadow of its threat people stood before
their houses, watching it unfold. In Judge Thayer's garden--it was the
house Morgan had fixed on that first morning of his exploration--the
rainmaker was firing up vigorously, sending up a smoke of such density
as he had not employed in his labors before. This black column rose but
a little way, where it flattened against the cool current that was
setting in ahead of the storm, and whirled off over the roofs of Ascalon
to mock the scoffers who had laughed in their day.

Morgan stabled his horse and went to the square, where many of the
town's inhabitants were gathered, all faces tilted to watch the storm.
Judge Thayer was there, glorifying in the success of his undertaking,
sparing none of those who had mocked him for a sucker and a fool. A cool
breath of reviving wind was moving, fresh, sweet, rain-scented; as
hopeful, as life-giving, as a reprieve to one chained among faggots at
the stake of intolerance.

"It looks like you're going to win, Judge," Morgan said.

"Win? I've won! Look at it, pourin' rain over at Glenmore, the advance
of it not three miles from here! It'll be here inside of five minutes,
rainin' pitchforks."

But it did not happen so. The rain appeared to have taken to dallying on
the way, in spite of the thickening of clouds over Ascalon. Straining
faces, green-tinted in the gloomy shadow of the overhanging cloud,
waited uplifted for the first drops of rain; the dark outriders of the
storm wheeled and mingled, turned and rolled, low over the dusty roofs;
lightning rived the rain curtain that swept the famished earth, so near
at hand that the sensitive could feel it in their hair; deep thunder
sent its tremor through the ground, jarring the windows of Ascalon that
had looked in their day upon storms of human passion which were but
insect strife to this.

Yet not a drop of rain fell on roof, on trampled way, on waiting face,
on outstretched hand, in all of Ascalon.

Judge Thayer was seen hurrying from the square, making for home and the
we