that mounted almost to the sky and swept forward with a savage eagerness
as if to bear down upon and engulf and obliterate the little oasis of a
village with its green productive fields, and reduce it again to the
wastes of desolation from which it had been so painfully redeemed by
man.

For nearly three days the storm lasted, raging by day and by night. The
trees bowed to earth and lifted themselves to bow again with the sound
of many waters in their leaves; and in the voice of the wind every
savage, primeval menace alternated with every wail of human grief and
anguish which has echoed through the ages. All desolation in the heart
of man, "I am without refuge!" shrieked in its high cries, and, as if
failing to find adequate expression in these, it summoned its chorus of
demons and rang with the despairing fury of all damned and discordant
things, until one bowed and covered the ears and muttered a prayer.

And the sand! It sifted constantly through doors and windows, and seemed
to fall in a fine continuous shower from the very roof. It covered
everything with a white rime; it sifted into the hair, the eyes;
breathing was difficult, the air was so chokingly full of it.

The rooms, too, were ever paced by the restless feet of the wind,
curtains swayed as if shaken by ghostly fingers; rugs and carpets rose
and fell upon the floor, and, whether one sat alone or with others, the
air seemed full of stealing presences, sad, and sometimes terrible; and
of immemorial whispers that would not be stilled.

The desert knows no time, its past and present are one, a thousand years
is as a single day, and when it chooses to find its voice all yesterdays
and all to-morrows blend.