The second
threat of the storm was more terrifying than the first; at any instant
it was likely to break forth in all its slashing fury--and she knew
not whither she went.

Even as she lost heart and was ready to turn wildly back in an effort
to reach Shaw's home before the deluge, the lightning flashes revealed
to her the presence of a dwelling just off the road not two hundred
feet ahead. She stumbled forward, crying like a frightened child.
There were no lights. The house looked dark, bleak, unfriendly.
Farther up the hillside still gleamed the little light that was meant
to keep Renwood's ghost from disturbing the slumbers of old man Grimes
and his wife. She could not reach that light, that much she knew.
Her feet were like hundredweights, her limbs almost devoid of power;
Grimes' hut appeared to be a couple of miles away. With a last,
breathless effort, she turned off the road and floundered through
weeds and brush until she came to what proved to be the rear of the
darkened house. Long, low, rangy it reached off into the shadows,
chilling in its loneliness. There was no time left for her to climb
the flight of steps and pound on the back door. The rain was swishing
in the trees with a hiss that forbade delay.

She threw herself, panting and terror-stricken, into the cave-like
opening under the porch, her knees giving way after the supreme
effort. The great storm broke as she crouched far back against the
wall; her hands over her ears, her eyes tightly closed. She was safe
from wind and rain, but not from the sounds of that awful conflict.
The lantern lay at her feet, sending its ray out into the storm with
the senseless fidelity of a beacon light.

"Penelope!" came a voice through the storm, and a second later a
man plunged into the recess, crashing against the wall beside her.
Something told her who it was, even before he dropped beside her and
threw his strong arm about her shoulders. The sound of the storm died
away as she buried her face on his shoulder and shivered so mightily
that he was alarmed. With her face burning, her blood tingling, she
lay there and wondered if the throbbing of her heart were not about to
kill her.

He was crying something into her ear--wild, incoherent words
that seemed to have the power to quiet the storm. And she was
responding--she knew that eager words were falling from her lips,
but she never knew what they were--responding with a fervor that was
overwhelming her with joy