eath of dread. As she approached the tree-roots where the cape
jessamines lay, she had to force her feet forward by sheer effort of
will. At a little distance from them she broke a stick and with it
managed to drag the bunch to her, turning her eyes with a shiver from
the trampled spot near by. She picked up the flowers, and treading with
caution, retraced her steps to the wider path.

She stepped into the Red Road at length in the teeth of a thunder-storm,
which had arisen almost without warning to break with the passionate
intensity of electric storms in the South. The green-golden fields were
now a gray seethe of rain and the farther peaks lifted like huge tumbled
masses of onyx against a sky stippled with wan yellow and vicious
violet. The wind leaped and roared and swished through the weeping
foliage, lashing the dull Pompeian-red puddles, swirling leaves and
twigs from the hedges and seeming to be intent on dragging her very
garments from her as she ran.

There was no shelter, but even had there been, she would not have
sought it. The turbulence of nature around her matched, in a way, her
overstrained feeling, and she welcomed the fierce bulge of the wind in
the up-blowing whorls of her hair and the drenching wetness of the rain.
At length, out of breath, she crouched down under a catalpa tree,
watching the fangs of lightning knot themselves against the baleful
gray-yellow dimness, making sudden flares of unbearable brightness
against which twigs etched themselves with the unrelieved sharpness of
black paper silhouettes.

She tried to fix her mind on near things, the bending grasses, the
scurrying red runnels and flapping shrubbery, but her thoughts wilfully
escaped the tether, turning again and again to the events of the last
two hours. She pictured Unc' Jefferson's eyes rolling up in ridiculous
alarm, his winnowing arm lashing his indignant mule in his flight for
the doctor.

At the mental picture she choked with hysterical laughter, then cringed
suddenly against the sopping bark. She saw again the doctor's gaze lift
from his first examination of the tiny punctures to send a swift
penetrant glance straight at her, before he bent his great body to
carry the unconscious man to the house. Again a fit of shuddering swept
over her. Then, all at once, tears came, strangling sobs that bent and
swayed her. It was the discharge of the Leyden jar, the loosing of the
tense bow-string, and it brought relief.

After a