s on
the ledge.

And now there were only frowning masses of dark clouds in the west; and
there were frowning masses of clouds overhead.

The shadow of the coming night had fallen on the autumnal foliage in the
deep valley; in the place of the opaline haze was only a gray mist.

And now came, sweeping along between the parallel mountain ranges, a
sombre rain-cloud. The lad could hear the heavy drops splashing on the
treetops in the valley, long, long before he felt them on his head.

The roll of thunder sounded among the crags. Then the rain came down
tumultuously, not in columns, but in livid sheets. The lightnings rent
the sky, showing, as it seemed to him, glimpses of the glorious
brightness within,--too bright for human eyes.

He clung desperately to his precarious perch. Now and then a fierce rush
of wind almost tore him from it. Strange fancies beset him. The air was
full of that wild symphony of nature, the wind and the rain, the pealing
thunder, and the thunderous echo among the cliffs, and yet he thought he
could hear his own name ringing again and again through all the tumult,
sometimes in Pete's voice, sometimes in George's shrill tones.

He became vaguely aware, after a time, that the rain had ceased, and the
moon was beginning to shine through rifts in the clouds.

The wind continued unabated, but, curiously enough, he could not hear it
now. He could hear nothing; he could think of nothing. His consciousness
was beginning to fail.

George Birt had indeed forgotten him,--forgotten even the promised
"whings." Not that he had discovered anything so extraordinary in his
trap, for his trap was empty, but when he reached the mill, he found
that the miller had killed a bear and captured a cub, and the orphan,
chained to a post, had deeply absorbed George Birt's attention.

To sophisticated people, the boy might have seemed as grotesque as the
cub. George wore an unbleached cotton shirt. The waistband of his baggy
jeans trousers encircled his body just beneath his armpits, reaching to
his shoulder-blades behind, and nearly to his collar-bone in front. His
red head was only partly covered by a fragment of an old white wool hat;
and he looked at the cub with a curiosity as intense as that with which
the cub looked at him. Each was taking first lessons in natural history.

As long as there was daylight enough left to see that cub, did George
Birt stand and stare at the little beast. Then he clattered home on