.

There was no pause in the sudden storm. There was no mercy for
wretched human nerves. The blinding light was one endless chain,
sweeping across the heavens as though bent on forever wresting from
its path the black shadows that defied it.

And amidst all this turmoil, amidst all the devastating roar, which
shook the earth as though bent on wrecking the very mountains
themselves, amidst all the blinding, hellish light, so fierce, so
intense, that the last secrets of the remotest forest depths must be
yielded up, two horsemen dashed down the trail from the fur fort as
fast as sharp spurs could drive their eager beasts.

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE EYES OF THE HILLS

The thunder roared without intermission. It rose and fell, that was
all. From a truculent piano it leapt to a titanic crescendo only to
find relief again in a fierce growling dissatisfaction. It seemed less
of an elemental war than a physical attack upon a shuddering earth.
The electric fires rifting the darkness of this out-world night were
beyond compare in their terror. The radiance of sunlight might well
have been less than the blaze of a rush candle before the staggering
brilliancy. It was wild, wild and fearsome. It was vicious and utterly
terrifying.

Below the quaking earth was in little better case. Only was the scene
here in closer touch with human understanding. Here the terror was of
earth, here disaster was of human making. Here the rack of heart was
in destruction by wanton fire. Shrieking, hissing, crackling, only
insignificant by comparison with the war of the greater elements,
flames licked up and devoured with ravening appetites the tinder-like
structures of Joan's farm.

The girl was standing in the open. A confined enough open space almost
completely surrounded by fire. Before her were the blazing farm
buildings, behind her was the raging furnace that once had been her
home. And on one side of her the flames commingled so as to be
impassable. Her head was bowed and her eyes were closed, her hands
were pressed tight over her ears in a vain attempt to shut out
cognizance of the terror that reigned about and above her. She stood
thus despairing. She was afraid, terribly afraid.

Beside her was her aunt, that strange creature whose brain had
always risen superior to the sufferings of the human body. Now
she was crushed to earth in mute submission to the powers which
overwhelmed her. She lay huddled upon the ground utterly lost to a