Suddenly all the daylight fled out through the tops of the trees, as it were.
And, spurning for the first time a flower, Una turned and fled with it, sobbing, tripping, stumbling, out of the wood—the intoning wood.
She reached the low, stone wall, breathless, wild-eyed.
“Preserve us a’! lassie, what’s happened to ye, the morning? Ye look ‘beglammered.’ Ye look scared; ye look sparrow-blastit.”
Never did a human voice fall more comfortingly upon a girl’s ears than the rough Scotch accents which greeted hers from the other side of that garden wall.
“Oh! Andrew, I—heard—” began Una, as strong arms lifted her over the wall.
“I h-heard—” she raved again.
But the words were blown from her lips by another hum; a hum that seemed heavenly, so loud, so cocksure, so mechanically humdrum it was—the hum of a skimming aëroplane.
“I heard—” she began for the third time—and lifted her eyes to the sky.
They were blinded by a sheet of flame.