“What is it, Justin?” she inquired.
“I think we shall have a tornado to-night,” he answered, gravely.
And, even as he spoke, the clouds were driven up higher and blacker, and the moans of the rising wind swept over the sea and land.
“Yes, we shall certainly have a tornado! Hurry on to the house, dear Britomarte! I must go back and put the animals under cover,” said Justin, suddenly turning back and hastening toward the sheepfold.
“And sure I must go and see if all the little chicks are safe in the henhouse, and lock the door and stop the hole to keep them in it,” said Judith, as suddenly hastening after him.
Britomarte, left alone, pursued her way toward the house, while darker grew the sky and deeper moaned the wind.
In the few minutes that passed before she reached the house, the heavens had grown black as night and formed a wild contrast to the ocean, which, as far as the eye could see, was one mass of boiling snow-white foam, across which the rising wind moaned and wailed as a prophetic spirit lamenting the woe to come.
Britomarte hurried into the house and began to let down the windows and close the shutters, hoping and praying all the time that Justin and Judith might return before the storm should burst.
When she had securely fastened up the house, as it was now pitch dark, she lighted the lamp and sat down to wait for the return of her friends.
The thunder rolled and broke, crash upon crash, like the explosion and fall of a world overhead, at the same instant that the lightning shot like shafts of fire through every crevice in the house, and the rain came down as if the “windows of heaven” had been opened for another flood.