Barton stingingly across his straining eyes. All around and about them
tortured forest trees moaned and writhed in the gale. Through every
cavernous vista gray sheets of rain went flapping madly by them. The
lightning was incredible. The thunder like the snarl of a glass sky
shivering into inestimable fragments.

With every gasping breath beginning to rip from his poor lungs like a
knifed stitch, the roan still faltered on each new ledge to whinny
desperately to his mate. Equally futilely from time to time, Barton,
with his hands cupped to his mouth, holloed--holloed--holloed--into
the thunderous darkness.

Then at a sharp turn in the trail, magically, in a pale, transient
flicker of light, loomed little Eve Edgarton's boyish figure, drenched
to the skin apparently, wind-driven, rain-battered, but with hands in
her pockets, slouch hat rakishly askew, strolling as nonchalantly down
that ghastly trail as a child might come strolling down a
stained-glassed, Persian-carpeted stairway to meet an expected guest.

In vaguely silhouetted greeting for one fleet instant a little khaki
arm lifted itself full length into the air.

Then more precipitately than any rational thing could happen, more
precipitately than any rational thing could even begin to happen,
could even begin to begin to happen, without shock, without noise,
without pain, without terror or turmoil, or any time at all to fight
or pray--a slice of living flame came scaling through the
darkness--and cut Barton's consciousness clean in two!