The door flew open with a bang and a tremendous gust of wind fairly blew them against the opposite wall.
“What a gale!” gasped Nell. “We’ll never be able to get out there!”
“I am going!” declared Jessie, and with lowered head dashed into the open. The other girls, gathering courage from her example, followed, and brought up short at the sight that met their eyes.
A giant tree, half dead at the top, had been struck by the lightning and uprooted. In its fall the outermost branches had brushed the roof of the lodge.
“Lucky it did not fall across the roof,” said Amy, shivering. “That would have meant good-bye lodge for fair.”
“Struck pretty close to us, at that,” said Nell. “Lucky you cut that in-wire, Jess.”
“Better get inside again,” said Miss Alling. “We shall be soaked in a moment.”
For the rain had begun in earnest, coming down in a swishing torrent that drove them on a run for the shelter of the lodge. And there they stayed until the storm blew itself out.
So quickly did the time pass after the departure of the boys for Gibbonsville that it was the second day before the girls began to feel anxious about them.
They were just beginning to imagine all kinds of dreadful things that might have happened to them when Burd and Fol returned, in Darry’s roadster, but not with Darry.