He had timed himself well; the task was completed; the last cap spread as the first drops fell, when the youth shouldered his rake and turned his steps toward the farmhouse. He had to run for it, for the storm was fast overtaking him, but he reached the great barn just in season to escape the deluge.
Hanging his rake upon a beam, he removed his broad hat, wiped the perspiration from his face, and heaved a long sigh of relief.
“Well, I did it,” he observed, with a satisfied uplifting of his head, “but small thanks I’ll get for my efforts. However, that is not my affair. My part was to do as I’d be done by, thanks or no thanks. Great Cæsar! how it rains! What lightning! What thunder!” he exclaimed, as flash after flash swept athwart the murky sky and almost simultaneous reports crashed like the continuous firing of mighty cannons, while the rain came down in sheets and drenched the thirsty earth.
He stood watching the conflict of elements for a few moments, then he remarked again:
“I am sure I have earned the right to rest a while, so I’m going in to have a tussle with Tacitus for an hour or two. Ho! hum! I wonder if I shall be able to pass the exams. and enter college this fall.”
He tossed his hat upon a peg, then, passing through a side door, traversed a short passage, then a shed, and finally entered the roomy, pleasant kitchen of the farmhouse, where a tidy, good-natured looking woman was mixing biscuit for supper.
With a smile and a pleasant word to her, the young man crossed the room, opened a door and mounted a flight of stairs to a small room on the back of the house, and which overlooked a winding stream, and, a few rods away, the railroad. Here he threw himself into a chair before a table, upon which there were several books, and was soon absorbed in the “Annals of Tacitus.”
Suddenly there came a blinding flash of lightning, followed instantly by a crash that seemed to shake the very foundation of the earth.
“That was very near,” muttered the youth, looking up from his book and glancing out of the window.
A startled cry burst from him as he did so, and he sprang to his feet.