The colonel slackened his pace, surprised that his horse should so soon
begin to drip and pant--Alice, familiar with the road, in the mean time
riding a mile ahead. 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.

Farm-houses were overthrown. Trees were twisted off from their roots and
torn to pieces. Wild animals and birds were dashed to death. Streams were
emptied of their waters. Human beings and horses and cattle were lifted
into the air, hurled hither and thither and thrown dead upon the earth.