lonic
in all but the rotary motion, came beating down upon the startled earth
like a falling wall of air.

In less than two minutes the world, the atmosphere, everything had
ceased to be. It was a universe of dust and sand, hurtling--God knew
whither.

In the suddenness of the storm's descent upon her, Beth became
speechless with dismay. Her mare dropped her head and slowly continued
to walk. Road, hills, desert--all had disappeared. To go onward was
madness; to remain seemed certain death. Despair and horror together
gripped Beth by the heart. There was nothing in the world she could do
but to close her eyes and double low above the saddle, her hat bent
down to shield her face.

At the end of a few minutes only the frightfulness of the thing could
no longer be endured. Beth had been all but torn from her seat by the
sheer weight and impact of the wind. All the world was roaring
prodigiously. The sand and dust, driving with unimaginable velocity,
smoked past in blinding fury.

The mare had ceased to move. Beth was aware of her inertia, dimly.
She remembered at last to dismount and stand in the animal's shelter.
At length on the raging and roaring of the air-sea, crashing onward in
its tidal might, came a fearful additional sound. It was rushing
onward towards the girl with a speed incredible--a sound of shrieking,
or whistling, that changed to a swishing as if of pinions, Titanic in
size, where some monstrous winged god was blown against, his will in a
headlong course through the tumult.

Then the something went by--the whole roof of a house--from twenty
miles away. It scraped in the earth, not ten feet off from where the
pony stood--and she bolted and ran for her life.

Down went Beth, knocked over by the mare. With a hideous crash the
flying roof was hurled against a nearby pinnacle of rock. The wooden
wings split upon the immovable obstruction, and on they went as before.

The pony had disappeared, in panic that nothing could have allayed.
The storm-pall swallowed her instantly, Beth could not have seen her
had she halted a rod away. Her eyes had been opened for half a moment
only before she was flung to the earth. She was rolling now, and for
the moment was utterly powerless to rise or to halt her locomotion.

When she presently grasped at a little gray shrub, came to a halt, and
tried to stand erect, she was buffeted bodily along by the wind with no
strength in her limbs to resist.

She