The marquis clung to the topmost branches, looking at
the still sky far above him, the still stream far below him, the still
tree-tops far around him, till he caught a glimpse of the only interesting
object to be seen--a black pony bearing its usual burden, if Alice Miller
could be called a burden, and pacing leisurely up the road beneath him. He
gazed as far as the palisade of trees permitted, but her father was not
yet in sight.
Suddenly, in the west, a single vein of lightning darted down the sky. A
few trees shuddered as if to shake the gathering shadows from their
bosoms. Then tenfold stillness. A bird flew past with a scream of terror,
the marquis looking in vain to see a hawk pursuing it. The distant moan of
a cow came from the fields. Not another sound, it seemed, was in the
world.
In an instant the south-west was black. A strange, remote murmur smote the
colonel's ear. Overhead he could see but a strip of hot, hazy sky. Had he
seen the whole heavens, he could have done nothing but go on. Quickly the
murmur became an awful muttering, then a deafening roar. The clatter, the
rush, the crash of a tornado were behind him. The groans of the very earth
were about him. The darkness of twilight was upon him. Alice and Death
were before him. A cloudy demon, towering high as the heavens, in whose
path nothing could live, was striding near and nearer.
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