neath and behind it a sheet of rain, like something let down that did
not quite touch the earth, the hot air vaporizing the drops before they
reached the ground.

Two or three times the wind got in the south, and those low, dun-colored
clouds that are nothing but harmless fog came hurrying up and covered
the sky, and city folk and women folk said the rain was at last near.
But the wise ones knew better. The clouds had no backing, the clear
sky was just behind them; they were only the nightcap of the south
wind, which the sun burnt up before ten o'clock.

Every storm has a foundation that is deeply and surely laid, and those
shallow surface-clouds that have no root in the depths of the sky
deceive none but the unwary.

At other times, when the clouds were not reabsorbed by the sky and rain
seemed imminent, they would suddenly undergo a change that looked like
curdling, and when clouds do that no rain need be expected. Time and
again I saw their continuity broken up, saw them separate into small
masses,--in fact saw a process of disintegration and disorganization
going on, and my hope of rain was over for that day. Vast spaces would
be affected suddenly; it was like a stroke of paralysis: motion was
retarded, the breeze died down, the thunder ceased, and the storm was
blighted on the very threshold of success.

I suppose there is some compensation in a drought; Nature doubtless
profits by it in some way. It is a good time to thin out her garden,
and give the law of the survival of the fittest a chance to come into
play. How the big trees and big plants do rob the little ones! there is
not drink enough to go around, and the strongest will have what there
is. It is a rest to vegetation, too, a kind of torrid winter that is
followed by a fresh awakening. Every tree and plant learns a lesson
from it, learns to shoot its roots down deep into the perennial
supplies of moisture and life.

But when the rain does come, the warm, sun-distilled rain; the
far-traveling, vapor-born rain; the impartial, undiscriminating,
unstinted rain; equable, bounteous, myriad-eyed, searching out every
plant and every spear of grass, finding every hidden thing that needs
water, falling upon the just and upon the unjust, sponging off every
leaf of every tree in the forest and every growth in the fields;
music to the ear, a perfume to the smell, an enchantment to the eye;
healing the earth, cleansing the air, renewing the fountains; honey
to the