In the morning Jule’s clothing still fluttered from the rope clothes-line, which spanned between oak trees in the yard behind the cabin—but every garment belonging to his wife had disappeared! An even greater misfortune was the loss of three soft, heavy, woolen blankets. But Jule Darien and his wife considered this a trivial matter in view of the fact that they had been unharmed.
It was Delia Callahan, of all the valley folk, who found aught that was amusing in these uncanny doings.
“It’s true—as ol’ man Gibson’s always maintained—th’ devil’s a woman; ain’t it proven, right ’ere in th’ valley?” she demanded. “An’ it’s an eddication she’s goin’ to git, too. Some fine day she’ll be comin’ to th’ school wi’ her books in th’ school bag, an’ her hair done up wi’ Lucy Duval’s side-combs, an’ like as not a’ dressed up in Fan Darien’s clothes. Ha! Ha!—it’s too funny!” Shaken with laughter, she rocked back and forth until tears rolled from her bright blue eyes.
But she was quite alone in her mirth, for there was none who laughed with her. None dared to laugh. They feared to make sport of The Evil One.
The long winter broke at last with a protracted period of drenching rains. Never in all the experience of the valley dwellers had there been so much rain in such a length of time. Rivers could not be forded; the rich, loamy soil was washed in great patches from the fields; little gullies, usually dry, now ran brimming with muddy water. Cattle were drowned and the spring planting was long delayed.
But when the sun again broke through the gray clouds people began to remark that for a long time they had not heard The Thunder Voice.
As a matter of fact it was never heard again.
II.
So ran the stories, and so often did my grandfather tell them, in order to humor my childish demands, that at length I could repeat them all—just as he told them, and almost word for word.
One by one, the years dropped into history, and recollection of “The Thunder Stories” came to me but rarely; and brought, instead of thrills of horror, only a mild amusement, as I would reflect on them as folk-lore of the Valley of Trelane.