lifted their heads and moved
uneasily as if some instinct sounded a warning in their dull brains.
Above the trees I saw the skirmish line of the storm.

In after hours Miss Harding told me that she had quickly solved the
secret of my wild dash. For a quarter of an hour she hung to the swaying
seat and said no word. Once I looked into her eyes and read in them that
she understood.

We dashed through a little village and paid no heed to the angry shouts
and menacing gestures of a man who wore a huge star on his chest. Oak
Cliff was only ten miles away. Could we make it?

The restful grays of the cloud had disappeared; and low down on the
horizon I saw a belt of bluish black, and as I looked, a bolt of
lightning jabbed through it. We were now running parallel to the storm,
and I believed I could beat it to Oak Cliff. I felt certain I could
reach the little hamlet of Pine Top, and from there on it would be easy
to get to shelter. Between us and Pine Top was practically an unbroken
wilderness, a part of the country reserved as a source of water supply
for the great city far to the south of us.

Into that wilderness we dashed.

We were taking a hill with the second speed clutch on when a grating
sound came to my alert ears, and with it an unnatural shudder of the
machinery. I threw off power and applied the brakes. As the car stopped
the deep rolling bass of the thunder rumbled over the hills.

"We are caught," declared Miss Harding, but there was no fear in her
voice.

"Not yet!" I asserted, springing from the car and making a frenzied
examination of the cause of our breakdown. I knew it was not serious,
and when I located it I joyously proclaimed it a mere trifle. But
automobile trifles demand minutes, and nature did not postpone the
resistless march of its storm battalions. As I toiled with wrench and
screw-driver I cursed the folly which induced me to plunge into that
desolate stretch of forest and marsh.

The roar of the tempest's artillery became continuous. The low scud
clouds travelling with incredible velocity blotted out the blue sky to
the east and darkness fell like a black shroud. I could not see to work
beneath the floor of the car, and lost another minute searching for and
lighting a candle.

In the uncanny gloom I saw the fair face of the one whose safety now was
menaced by my bold folly. I saw her form silhouetted against the black
of a fir tree in the almost blinding glare of a flame of lightning.