y. The sun poured with fierce, burning brightness,
and everything was quiet. It was at the first growl of thunder that
Freckles really had noticed the weather, and putting his own troubles
aside resolutely, raced for the swamp.

Sarah Duncan paused on the line. "Weel, I wouldna stay in this place for
a million a month," she said aloud, and the sound of her voice brought
no comfort, for it was so little like she had thought it that she
glanced hastily around to see if it had really been she that spoke. She
tremblingly wiped the perspiration from her face with the skirt of her
sunbonnet.

"Awfu' hot," she panted huskily. "B'lieve there's going to be a big
storm. I do hope Freckles will hurry."

Her chin was quivering as a terrified child's. She lifted her bonnet to
replace it and brushed against a bush beside her. WHIRR, almost into her
face, went a nighthawk stretched along a limb for its daytime nap. Mrs.
Duncan cried out and sprang down the trail, alighting on a frog that was
hopping across. The horrible croak it gave as she crushed it sickened
her. She screamed wildly and jumped to one side. That carried her into
the swale, where the grasses reached almost to her waist, and her horror
of snakes returning, she made a flying leap for an old log lying beside
the line. She alighted squarely, but it was so damp and rotten that she
sank straight through it to her knees. She caught at the wire as she
went down, and missing, raked her wrist across a barb until she tore a
bleeding gash. Her fingers closed convulsively around the second strand.
She was too frightened to scream now. Her tongue stiffened. She clung
frantically to the sagging wire, and finally managed to grasp it with
the other hand. Then she could reach the top wire, and so she drew
herself up and found solid footing. She picked up the club that she
had dropped in order to extricate herself. Leaning heavily on it,
she managed to return to the trail, but she was trembling so that she
scarcely could walk. Going a few steps farther, she came to the stump of
the first tree that had been taken out.

She sat bolt upright and very still, trying to collect her thoughts and
reason away her terror. A squirrel above her dropped a nut, and as it
came rattling down, bouncing from branch to branch, every nerve in her
tugged wildly. When the disgusted squirrel barked loudly, she sprang to
the trail.

The wind arose higher, the changes from light to darkness were more
abru