Somewhere sounded a bewildering crash, as if a thousand cartloads of stone were emptied right beside him. Miles sat up, wondering at the sound, wondering where he was, why his face felt wet, why Dolly clung sobbing to him. A blinding light for an instant tore across the sky, and showed the trees about him twisting in an awesome manner; then darkness closed in again, and, through it, deafened the appalling crash of thunder.
"Don't be frightened, Dolly, don't be frightened," stammered Miles, clutching his sister; he could feel Trug, with his whole great body a-tremble, crowding against his knee, and, through Dolly's terrified sobs, heard the beast whine.
A second flash, that seemed to rip the sky, lit up the black woods, and, upon the roar that followed, sounded the rush of downpouring rain. As if in bucketsful, the water broke through the frail little shelter; the ground beneath the children grew sodden, and their faces tingled under the smiting of the raindrops. "Come away, in among the trees," cried Miles, through the sough of the rain, and dragged Dolly to her feet.
"Back to Plymouth, oh, let us go back to Plymouth," she wailed.
Without reply, Miles gripped her wrist and stumbled up the hillside, where he remembered the thicker growth of trees began. Bushes tore his clothes and buffeted his dripping face; rain blinded him; the flash of the lightning dazzled out just long enough to show how unfriendly trunks beset him, then flared away and left him, half stunned by the thunder that followed, to bruise himself against their harsh bark.
Still, blinded and beaten and breathless, he fought his way onward and at his side haled Dolly, dumb with the bewilderment of the storm. He had forgotten whither he hoped to go; he knew only that there was about him a lurid darkness of overpowering rain and rattling thunder through which he fled away.
It had been several moments since the last clap of thunder, he realized suddenly, and the rain that yet pattered noisily among the leaves did not beat upon him with the old fury. When the thunder growled again, it was from far in the distance, and the space between the flash and the crash was wider. "'Tis near over, Dolly," he spoke subduedly.
The little girl fetched a tremulous, weary sob and made a movement to drop down on the wet turf, but Miles held her arm more firmly. "Nay, we must keep walking till we be dry," he said, in what he tried to make a brave voice. "Maybe we'll come on some warm, sheltered spot," he added, for his poor little companion's comfort.
Holding each other fast by the hand, and with the dog close at their heels, they trudged forward into the black woods. Though lessened in force, the rain still descended in a steady drizzle, and each bush against which they brushed drenched them with an added shower. The ground was so slippery and thick with mud that Miles began to fear they had strayed into a swamp, and, when they stumbled at last upon a thicket of close-growing evergreen, he thought it safest to shelter there till daylight.
Crawling in beneath the low branches that half protected them from the slackening rain, they cuddled close to the dog and to each other. "I'm glad I remembered to save my poppet," Dolly sought to find some comfort. "She'd have been frightened, had we left her alone."