Wondering at the unusual occurrence, Dr. Sentelle felt his way back to his home through the thick fog, and stood leaning upon his gate gazing up the street.
An object approached him, loomed up with gigantic proportions through the fantastic exaggerations of the fog, stopped a few feet from where the preacher stood, and spoke one word in a thunderous tone:
“Whoosh!”
Dr. Sentelle’s heavy walking stick went clattering upon the ground, he reeled backward, struck his heels against the porch steps, and sat down with a violence which filled the dome of his cranium with bursting, falling stars.
“Heavens!” he exclaimed.
Diada stooped, picked up Dr. Sentelle’s stick by the little end, and, thus armed with a weighty club, she went loping onward.
A group of darkies sat in a negro barber-shop discussing the wild woman of the woods. Diada opened the door, entered as quietly and peaceably as she could, and remarked:
“Whoosh!”
The negroes disappeared as promptly and as completely as if that word were a cyclone puffing at a handful of feathers.
Diada trotted down the street in the direction they had gone and found herself in front of the Hen-Scratch saloon, where a house full of patrons talked in whispers and fortified themselves by indulgence in red liquor. Diada entered the swinging door and gave the pass-word: “Whoosh!”