led old rooster, whose melancholy appearance added
another shade of gloom to the dismal outlook. The wind twisted his long
tail feathers from side to side so energetically that, even as
Bennington looked, the poor fowl, perforce, had to scud, careened from
one side to the other, like a heavily-laden craft, into the shelter of
his coop. The wind, left to its own devices, skittered across
cold-looking little pools of water, and tried in vain to induce the
soaked leaves of the autumn before to essay an aerial flight.

The rain hit the roof now in heavy gusts as though some one had dashed
it from a pail. The wind whistled through a loosened shingle and
rattled around an ill-made joint. Within the house itself some slight
sounds of preparation for breakfast sounded the clearer against the
turmoil outside. And then Bennington became conscious that for some
time he had _felt_ another sound underneath all the rest. It was grand
and organlike in tone, resembling the roar of surf on a sand beach as
much as anything else. He looked out again, and saw that it was the
wind in the trees. The same conditions that had before touched the harp
murmur of a stiller day now struck out a rush and roar almost
awe-inspiring in its volume. Bennington impulsively threw open the
window and leaned out.

The great hill back of the camp was so steep that the pines growing on
its slope offered to the breeze an almost perpendicular screen of
branches. Instead of one, or at most a dozen trees, the wind here
passed through a thousand at once. As a consequence, the stir of air
that in a level woodland would arouse but a faint whisper, here would
pass with a rustling murmur; a murmur would be magnified into a noise
as of the mellow falling of waters; and now that the storm had
awakened, the hill caught up its cry with a howl so awful and sustained
that, as the open window let in the full volume of its blast,
Bennington involuntarily drew back. He closed the sash and turned to
dress.

After the first disappointment, strange to say, Bennington became quite
resigned. He had felt, a little illogically, that this giving of a
whole day to the picnic was not quite the thing. His Puritan conscience
impressed him with the sacredness of work. He settled down to the fact
of the rainstorm with a pleasant recognition of its inevitability, and
a resolve to improve his time.

To that end, after breakfast, he drew on a pair of fleece-lined
slippers, donned a sweater