As I looked around me and waited, the blue sky without became suddenly overclouded. I stepped to the window. A glorious sight met my eyes, but I knew that it meant nothing less than a mountain storm; and here was I in such a place, at a considerable distance from home. Mass after mass of inky-black clouds swept over the mountain, driven by the wind, obscuring the pale blue and gold which had been so lately predominant. The wind, too, began to rise, blowing in gusts which swept over and around the cabin, but mercifully left it unharmed, because of the protection afforded by the high rock. But it rattled the windows and whistled and blew, and finally brought the rain down in a fearful torrent. Flashes of lightning leaped from crag to crag, uniting them by one vast chain. Each was followed by a roar of thunder, re-echoed through the hills.
It was an awful scene, and I trembled with an unknown fear, especially when I felt rather than saw that some one was close behind me. I turned slowly with that fascination which one feels to behold a dreaded object; and there, quite near me indeed, stood the schoolmaster. I suppose his coming must have been unnoticed in the roar of the tempest. I could not otherwise account for his presence. The strange cloak, or outer garment, which he wore seemed perfectly dry; and I wondered how he could have come in from such rain apparently without getting wet. The smile upon his lips was certainly a mocking one; and as I faced him thus I felt afraid with the same cold, sickly fear. His eyes had in them a gleam which I did not like—of cunning, almost of ferocity.
"You have come," he said, without any previous salutation, "to pry into a mystery; and I tell you you shall not do it. Rather than that you should succeed in the attempt I would hide you away in one of those hills, from which you should never escape."
I strove to speak, but my tongue clove to the roof of my mouth; and I could only gaze into those strange, gleaming eyes of his, from which I was afraid to remove my own.
"You have come from America," he said; "perhaps it is to get her. And that you shall never do till my plans are completed."
"To get whom?" I faltered out.
"Whom?" he thundered in a terrible voice, which set me trembling more than ever. "You know whom. You are trying to win Winifred from me—the child of my heart, beautiful as the mountain stream, and wayward as the breeze that stirs its surface."
His face changed and softened and his very voice sunk to one of peculiar sweetness as he spoke of the child. But in an instant again he had resumed his former wildness and harshness of tone and demeanor.
"You are trying to win the child from me," he went on; "to destroy my influence over her, to upset my plans. But you shall not do it—I say you shall not do it!"