“I do––I do!” She gasped. “Oh, I cannot think how I love you––it scares me to think!” Her arm was around his neck, her face was turned to his.
He saw her lips form the words, guessed what it was she was saying. The crash on crash of thunder beat the sound of her voice to nothingness. The white glare of the lightning flashes blinded them. Coaley, quivering, his nostrils belling until they showed all red within, his big eyes staring, forged ahead, fighting the bit.
“He’s rinning away wi’ us!” shouted Lance, his lips close to her ear, and laughed boyishly.
“Mother––” he heard her say, and pulled her higher in his arms, so that he could be sure that she heard him.
“I’ll just pick your little old mother up in my arms and make her love me, too!” he cried. “Nothing can spoil our love––nothing!”
As though the gods themselves chided his temerity, the very heavens split and shattered all sound with rending uproar. Coaley squatted, stopped and stood shaking, his heart pounding so 306 that Lance felt its tremulous tattoo against his thigh. The rumbling after-note of the thunder seemed like silence.
“It struck close. That shed––look!” Lance’s voice was no longer the voice of the young male whose love would override Fate itself. It was the voice of the man who will meet emergencies quietly, unflinchingly, and soothe the woman’s fear. “Don’t be afraid––it’s all right, sweetheart.”
He forced Coaley to go on. He smiled at Mary Hope’s pallor, he reassured her as they neared her home. A shed, sufficiently detached to keep its fire to itself, was blazing. The wind puffed suddenly from nowhere and waved the high, yellow flames like torn ribbons. Great globules of water splashed upon them from the pent torrent above. Coaley galloped through the gate, passed the house, shied at something lying on the ground, stopped abruptly when Lance pulled sharply on the bit.
“Girl––sweetheart––be game!” Lance said sternly when Mary Hope screamed.
He let her to the ground, swung off and passed her, running to the pitifully still little figure of Mother Douglas lying in the pathway, her checked apron flapping, its starchy stiffness showing limp dark spots where the raindrops splashed.