"He didn't have anything to do with it," Morgan assured him, grinning a little over the quick shift in the old man's attitude, for there was awe in his voice.
"No, I don't reckon," said Joe thoughtfully, "but it looks kind of suspicious."
The cloud was lifting rapidly, as summer storms usually come upon that unprotected land, sullen in its threat of destruction rather than promise of relief. A great dark fleece rolled ahead of the green-hued rain curtain, the sun bright upon it, the hush of its oncoming over the waiting earth. No breath of wind stirred, no movement of nature disturbed the silent waiting of the dusty land, save the lunging of foolish grasshoppers among the drooping, withered sunflowers beside the road as the travelers passed.
"I'm goin' to see if I can make it to town before she hits," said Joe, lashing out with his whip. "Lordy! ain't it a comin'!"
"I think I'll ride on," said Morgan, feeling a natural desire for shelter against that grim-faced storm.
The oncoming cloud had swept its flank across the sun before Morgan rode into town, and in the purple shadow of its threat people stood before their houses, watching it unfold. In Judge Thayer's garden—it was the house Morgan had fixed on that first morning of his exploration—the rainmaker was firing up vigorously, sending up a smoke of such density as he had not employed in his labors before. This black column rose but a little way, where it flattened against the cool current that was setting in ahead of the storm, and whirled off over the roofs of Ascalon to mock the scoffers who had laughed in their day.
Morgan stabled his horse and went to the square, where many of the town's inhabitants were gathered, all faces tilted to watch the storm. Judge Thayer was there, glorifying in the success of his undertaking, sparing none of those who had mocked him for a sucker and a fool. A cool breath of reviving wind was moving, fresh, sweet, rain-scented; as hopeful, as life-giving, as a reprieve to one chained among faggots at the stake of intolerance.
"It looks like you're going to win, Judge," Morgan said.
"Win? I've won! Look at it, pourin' rain over at Glenmore, the advance of it not three miles from here! It'll be here inside of five minutes, rainin' pitchforks."
But it did not happen so. The rain appeared to have taken to dallying on the way, in spite of the thickening of clouds over Ascalon. Straining faces, green-tinted in the gloomy shadow of the overhanging cloud, waited uplifted for the first drops of rain; the dark outriders of the storm wheeled and mingled, turned and rolled, low over the dusty roofs; lightning rived the rain curtain that swept the famished earth, so near at hand that the sensitive could feel it in their hair; deep thunder sent its tremor through the ground, jarring the windows of Ascalon that had looked in their day upon storms of human passion which were but insect strife to this.