Birt could not eat. He soon rose from the table and resumed his
chair by the window, and for half an hour no word passed between
them.

The thunder seemed to roll on the very roof of the cabin, and it
trembled beneath the heavy fall of the rain. At short intervals a
terrible blue light quivered through crevices in the "daubin'"
between the logs of the wall, and about the rude shutter which
closed the glassless window. Now and then a crash from the forest
told of a riven tree. But the storm had no terrors for the inmates
of this humble dwelling. Pete and Joe had already gone to bed;
Tennessee had fallen asleep while playing on the floor, and Rufe
dozed peacefully in his chair. Even Mrs. Dicey nodded as she
knitted, the needles sometimes dropping from her nerveless hand.

Birt silently watched the group for a time in the red light of the
smouldering fire and the blue flashes from without. At length he
softly rose and crept noiselessly to the door; the fastening was the
primitive latch with a string attached; it opened without a sound in
his cautious handling, and he found himself in the pitchy darkness
outside, the wild mountain wind whirling about him, and the rain
descending in steady torrents.

He had stumbled only a few steps from the house when he thought he
indistinctly heard the door open again. He dreaded his mother's
questions, but he stopped and looked back.

He saw nothing. There was no sound save the roar of the wind, the
dash of the rain, and the commotion among the branches of the trees.