DRED.
A Southern thunder-shower.
The day had been sultry, and it was now an hour or two past midnight, when a thunder-storm, which had long been gathering and muttering in the distant sky, began to develop its forces.
A low shivering sigh crept through the woods, and swayed in weird whistlings the tops of the pines; and sharp arrows of lightning came glittering down among the darkness of the branches, as if sent from the bow of some warlike angel. An army of heavy clouds swept in a moment across the moon; then came a broad, dazzling, blinding sheet of flame, concentrating itself on the top of a tall pine near where Dred was standing, and in a moment shivered all its branches to the ground as a child strips the leaves from a twig....
The storm, which howled around him, bent the forest like a reed, and large trees, uprooted from the spongy and tremulous soil, fell crashing with a tremendous noise; but, as if he had been a dark spirit of the tempest, he shouted and exulted....
Gradually the storm passed by; the big drops dashed less and less frequently; a softer breeze passed through the forest, with a patter like the clapping of a thousand little wings; and the moon occasionally looked over the silvery battlements of the great clouds.
Nature’s lesson on love.
“Love is a mighty good ting, anyhow,” said Tiff. “Lord bress you, Miss Nina, it makes eberyting go kind o’ easy. Sometimes when I’m studding upon dese yer tings, I says to myself, ’pears like de trees in de wood, dey loves each oder. Dey stands kind o’ lockin’ arms so, and dey kind o’ nod der heads, and whispers so! ’Pears like de grapevines and de birds, and all dem ar tings, dey lives comfortable togeder, like dey was peaceable and liked each oder. Now, folks is apt to get a-stewin’ an’ a-frettin’ round, an’ turnin’ up der noses at dis yer ting, an’ dat ar; but ’pears like de Lord’s works takes eberyting mighty easy. Dey jest kind o’ lives along peaceable. I tink it’s mighty ’structive!”