e wet sand squashed under the feet of
their horses and splashed up on their riding boots and their slickers.
It even spotted their faces here and there, and a light brown spray
darted out to right and left of the falling hoofs. For all the streets
of Elkhead were running shallow rivers, with dark, swift currents, and
when they left the little town the landscape was shut out by the falling
torrents. It made a strange and shifting panorama, for the rain varied
in its density now and again, and as it changed hills which had been
quite blotted out leaped close upon them, like living things, and then
sprang back again into the mist.

So heavy was that tropical fall of water that the horses were bothered
by the beating of the big drops, and shook their heads and stamped
fretfully under the ceaseless bombardment. Indeed, when one stretched
out his hand the drops stung him as if with lashes of tiny whips. There
was no wind, no thunder, no flash of lightning, only the tremendous
downpour which blended earth and sky in a drab, swift river.

The air was filled with parallel lines, as in some pencil drawings--not
like ordinary rain, but as if the sky had changed into a vast
watering-spout and was sending down a continuous flood from a myriad
holes. It was hard to look up through the terrific downpour, for it
blinded one and whipped the face and made one breathless, but now and
again a puff of the rare wind would lift the sodden brim of the sombrero
and then one caught a glimpse of the low-hanging clouds, with the
nearest whiffs of black mist dragging across the top of a hill. Without
noticeable currents of wind, that mass of clouds was shifting
slowly--with a sort of rolling motion, across the sky. And the weight of
the rain forced the two to bend their heads and stare down to where the
face of the earth was alive with the gliding, brown waters, whose
surface was threshed into a continual foam. To speak to each other
through the uproar, they had to cup their hands about their lips and
shout. Then again the rainfall around them fell away to a drizzling mist
and the beating of the downpour sounded far away, and they were
surrounded by distant walls of noise. So they came to the McDuffy place.

It was a helpless ruin, long abandoned. Not an iota of the roof
remained. The sheds for the horses had dropped to the earth; but the
walls of the house still remained standing, in part, with the empty
windows looking out with a mocking promis