ground on its back, lay like a huge animal knocked lifeless.

He forgot bed and sleep and replenished his fire. His ear, trained
to catch and to distinguish sounds of country life, was now
becoming alive to the commencement of one of those vast appalling
catastrophes in Nature, for which man sees no reason and can detect
the furtherance of no plan--law being turned with seeming
blindness, and in the spirit of sheer wastage, upon what it has
itself achieved, and spending its sublime forces in a work of self-
desolation.

Of the two windows in his room, one opened upon the back yard, one
upon the front. Both back yard and front contained, according to
the custom of the country, much shrubbery, with aged fruit trees,
mostly cherry and peach. There were locusts also at the rear of the
house, the old-time yard favorite of the people; other forest trees
stood around. Through both his windows there began to reach him a
succession of fragile sounds; the snapping of rotten, weakest, most
overburdened twigs. On fruit tree and forest tree these went down
first--as is also the law of storm and trial of strength among men.
The ground was now as one flooring of glass; and as some of these
small branches dropped from the tree-tops, they were broken into
fragments, like icicles, and slid rattling away into the nearest
depressions of the ground. Starting far up in the air sometimes,
they struck sheer upon other lower branches, bringing them along
also; this gathering weight in turn descended upon others lower
yet, until, so augmented, the entire mass swept downward and fell,
shivered against crystal flooring.

But soon these more trivial facts held his attention no longer: