a low and
meek-looking bank of clouds just above the southwest sky-line and
announced that we were going to have a "blow," as he called it.

I was inclined to doubt this, for the sun was still shining, there was
no trace of a breeze, and the sky straight over my head was a pellucid
pale azure. But, when I came to notice it, there was an unusual, small
stir among my chickens, the cattle were restless, and one would
occasionally hold its nose high in the air and then indulge in a
lowing sound. Even Bobs moved peevishly from place to place, plainly
disturbed by more than the flies and the heat. I had a feeling,
myself, of not being able to get enough air into my lungs, a depressed
and disturbed feeling which was nothing more than the barometer of my
body trying to tell me that the glass was falling, and falling
forebodingly.

By this time I could see Whinnie's cloud-bank rising higher above the
horizon and becoming more ragged as it mushroomed into anvil-shaped
turrets. Then a sigh or two of hot air, hotter even than the air about
us, disturbed the quietness and made the level floor of my yellowing
wheat undulate a little, like a breast that has taken a quiet breath
or two. Then faint and far-off came a sound like the leisurely firing
of big guns, becoming quicker and louder as the ragged arch of the
storm crept over the sun and marched down on us with strange twistings
and writhings and up-boilings of its tawny mane.

"Ye'd best be makin' things ready!" Whinnie called out to me. But even
before I had my windows down little eddies of dust were circling about
the shack. Then came a long and sucking sigh of wind, followed by a
hot calm too horrible to be endured, a hot calm from the stifling
center of which your spirit cried out for whatever was destined to
happen to happen at once. The next moment brought its answer to that
foolish prayer, a whining and whistling of wind that shook our little
shell of a house on its foundations, a lurid flash or two, and then
the tumult of the storm itself.

The room where I stood with my children grew suddenly and uncannily
dark. I could hear Struthers calling thinly from the kitchen door to
Whinnie, who apparently was making a belated effort to get my
chicken-run gate open and my fowls under cover. I could hear a
scattering drive of big rain-drops on the roof, solemn and soft, like
the fall of plump frogs. But by the time Whinnie was in through the
kitchen door this had changed. It h