ained water. I looked toward the windows, from
which the curtains had been drawn aside. Rain poured glistening down the
panes, but the clean storm was empty of horror.

"Drink some of this, Mr. Locke," urged Vere, whose arm was about me.
"Sit quiet, and I guess you'll be all right in a few moments."

I took the advice. Strength was flowing into me, as inexplicably as it
had flowed away from me a while past. How can I describe the certainty
of life that possessed me? The assurance was established, singularly
enough, for all of us. None of my companions asked, and I myself never
doubted whether the danger might return. The experience was complete,
and closed. Moreover, already the Thing that had been our enemy, the
horror that had been Its atmosphere, the mystery that haunted
Desire--all were fading into the past. The phantoms were exorcised, and
the house purified of fear.

But there was something different from ordinary storm in this tempest.
The tumult of rain and wind linked another, deeper roar with theirs. The
house quivered with a steady trembling like a bridge over which a train
is passing. Pulling myself together I turned to Vere.

"What is happening outdoors?" I asked.

"The cloudburst was too much for the dam," he answered regretfully. "It
went off with a noise like a big gun, a while back. I expect the lake is
flooding the whole place and messing up everything from our cellar to
the chickenhouse. Daylight is due pretty soon, now, and the storm is
dying down. We'll be able to add up the damage, after a bit."

"The water came down the chimney and drowned Bagheera," Phillida bravely
tried to summon nonchalance. "Isn't it lucky you and Desire could not
get started in the car, after all? Fancy being out in that!"

Desire Michell steadied her soft lips and gave her quota to the shelter
of commonplace speech we raised between ourselves and emotions too
recently felt.

"It was like the tropical storms in Papua, where I lived until this
year," she said. "Once, one blew down the mission house."

Vere's weather prediction proved quite right. In an hour the storm had
exhausted itself, or passed away to other places. Sunrise came with a
veritable glory of crimson and gold, blazing through air washed limpidly
pure by the rain. The east held a troop of small clouds red as
flamingoes flying against a shining sky; last traces of our tempest.

We stood on the porch together to survey an unfamiliar scene in the rosy
l