you were dead or alive. Cruger sent out three others to warn the
planters, and they've all been brought home, one dead, one maimed, one
with chills and fever and as mad as a March hare. Good God! what a
visitation! I'd rather have been on a moving bog in Ireland. You
wouldn't have ridden out in that hurricane if I'd got you, not if I'd
been forced to tie you up. Fancy your being here alive, and not even a
cold in your head! But you've a grand destiny to work out, and the
hurricane--which I believe was the Almighty in a temper--knew what it
was about. Now tell me your experience. I'm panting to tell you mine.
I've not had a soul to talk to since the hour it started. The Missis
behaved like a Trojan while it lasted, then went to bed, and hasn't
spoken to me since; and as for everyone else in Christianstadt--well,
they've retired to calm their nerves in the only way,--prayer first and
whiskey after."

Alexander took possession of his own easy-chair and looked gratefully
around the room. The storm had not disturbed it, neither had a wench's
duster. Since his mother's death he had loved this room with a more
grateful affection than any mortal had inspired, well as he loved his
aunt, Hugh Knox, and Neddy. But the room did not talk, and the men who
had written the great books which made him indifferent to his island
prison for days and weeks at a time, were dead, and their selfishness
was buried with them.

Meanwhile Knox, forgetting his desire to hear the experience of his
guest, was telling his own. It was sufficiently thrilling, but not to be
compared with that of the planter's; and when he had finished, Alexander
began with some pride to relate his impressions of the storm. He, too,
had not talked for three days; his heart felt warm again; and in the
familiar comfortable room, the terrible picture of the hurricane seemed
to spring sharp and vivid from his memory; he had recalled it confusedly
hitherto, and made no effort to live it again. Knox leaned forward
eagerly, dropping his pipe; Alexander talked rapidly and brilliantly,
finally springing to his feet, and concluding with an outburst so
eloquent that his audience cowered and covered his face with his hands.
For some moments Knox sat thinking, then he rose and pushed a small
table in front of Alexander, littering it with pencils and paper, in his
untidy fashion.

"My boy," he said, "you're still hot with your own eloquence. Before you
cool off, I want you to write