sighed
heavily, and all the cavernous voices echoed his grief.

When that terrible flash of lightning came, Ben was still on the slope
of the mountain where his brother had left him. The next moment he heard
the wild whirl of the gusts as they came surging up the valley. He saw
the frantic commotion of the woods on distant spurs as the wind
advanced, preceded by swirling columns of dust which carried myriads of
leaves, twigs, and even great branches rent from the trees, as evidence
of its force.

Ben turned, and ran like a deer up the steep ascent. "It'll blow
that thar barn spang off'n the bluff, I'm thinkin'--an' the
filly--Cobe--Cobe!" he cried out to her as he neared the shanty.

He stopped short, his eyes distended. The door was open. There was no
hair nor hoof of the filly within. He could have no doubt that his
brother had actually taken his property for this errand against his
will.

"That thar boy air no better 'n a low-down horse-thief!" he declared
bitterly.

The gusts struck the little barn. It careened this way and that, and
finally the flimsy structure came down with a crash, one of the boards
narrowly missing Ben's head as it fell. He had a hard time getting to
the house in the teeth of the wind, but its violence only continued a
few minutes, and when he was safe within doors he looked out of the
window at the silent mists, beginning to steal about the coves and
ravines, and at the rain as it fell in serried columns. Long after dark
it still beat with unabated persistence on the roof of the log cabin,
and splashed and dripped with a chilly, cheerless sound from the low
eaves. Sometimes a drop fell down the wide chimney, and hissed upon the
red-hot coals, for Ben had piled on the logs and made a famous fire. He
could see that his mother now and then paused to listen in the midst of
her preparations for supper. Once as she knelt on the hearth, and
deftly inserted a knife between the edges of a baking corn-cake and the
hoe, she looked up suddenly at Ben without turning the cake. "I hearn
the beastis's huff!" she said.

Ben listened. The fire roared. The rain went moaning down the valley.

"Ye never hearn nothin'," he rejoined.

Nevertheless, she rose and opened the door. The cold air streamed in.
The firelight showed the mists, pressing close in the porch,
shivering, and seeming to jostle and nudge each other as they peered in,
curiously, upon the warm home-scene, and the smoking supper, and the