But the interests, the growing pastimes, of their camp life were too many and varied—chase and capture in the Long Pasture, riding the air with a whisper by telephony and telegraphy, as most of them could now do—for them to waste much thought upon that lonely—eccentric—little figure.
Yet, somehow, it rode before Pemrose to-night upon the lightning’s vivid broomstick; she caught herself wondering what its background had been—what sort of life had left it imposing upon the superstitions of mountain people—living upon their crumbs, in return.
At a certain point in her speculations the girl, staring into the fire with eyes of blue patchwork, started—snorted. She always did snort and shy, like Revelation at trail tumbleweed, when she thought long upon that figure of a waif-woman who dabbled in radio like herself.
“I’d like to see the inside of her umbrella,” thought Pemrose.
And with that the world fell in beneath her. The clouds, for the most part below them, were ripped by a terrible light.
Like a thief in the night the mountain storm was on—and it was such a thunderplump, sudden, banging electric storm, as these girls had never beheld before.
A blue-black darkness herded them together around their cowering fire—feeling as if the Day of Judgment were upon them—and every minute that bruised darkness spit flame; a flame so dazzling that the eyeballs caught it and saw by it after it had passed.
“We must seek shelter in that wooden camp,” said the Guardian, putting her arm around Una. “The rain—I suppose it will ‘rain pitchforks’ presently—may drift in upon us, but at least we shall have a roof.”
And from there they watched the world pitchforked beneath them—torn, racked, groaning, blazing.
“Goodness! It’s like fifty days of judgment rolled into one,” moaned Dorothy—and hid her eyes against the Guardian. “Hide me! Hide me!”