with his fingers the edge of the hole he had dug. In the bottom of the
hole a thistle-down lay unmoved. When the lull came, and he could raise
his head, having escaped injury or death from falling stocks and stones,
he darted over his shoulder a glance of awful anxiety at the cottage--of
such anxiety as a strong man may reach to the depths of but once or
twice in his prime. The roof of the cottage was gone; there were no
fragments, for the wind was a clean sweeper; it had bodily vanished. The
walls stood. He dragged himself unsteadily to his feet, and looked
about for his spade. It was nowhere to be seen; the besom of the gale
had whirled it to some unknown limbo.

The hole was still not quite a foot and a half deep, and would not
preserve the cradle, if placed therein, from the destroyer. He shuffled
back to the cottage with awkward, hasty steps. The baby had cried itself
to sleep, and lay in its cradle in the corner, unconscious of the ruin
of its home. The old man went to the hearth, on which the fire had been
blown out, and from under the ashes dragged out a battered fire-shovel,
its edge worn away, its handle loose. It was the nearest approach to a
spade that was left him. Just as he got back to the hole another blast
carried him off his feet, and he fell prostrate, this time clutching his
substitute spade beneath him. He rose again, stepped into the hole,
crouching down as low as possible, and rapidly raised out of it one
shovelful of earth after another; it was no sooner on the surface than
it was whisked away like dust. In the wood, a furlong to the right, some
dozen trees were prostrated between one thrust of the shovel and the
next; dark straight firs and silver birches, that slipped downwards to
the valley like stiff, gleaming snakes.

Meanwhile the shovel had struck on a layer of stones, the remains of
some past landslip, since buried under flowering earth. With its