rise and following a winding road out beyond the graveyard and the last of
the village lights. The wild spring rain pounded and rattled on the tin
roof overhead, and Sam, his back closely pressed against the front of the
house, fought to regain control of his mind.

For an hour he stood there staring into the darkness and watched with
delight the progress of the storm. He had--an inheritance from his mother
--a love of thunderstorms. He remembered a night when he was a boy and his
mother had got out of bed and gone here and there through the house
singing. She had sung softly so that the sleeping father did not hear, and
in his bed upstairs Sam had lain awake listening to the noises--the rain
on the roof, the occasional crash of thunder, the snoring of Windy, and
the unusual and, he thought, beautiful sound of the mother singing in the
storm.

Now, lifting up his head, he looked about with delight. Trees in the grove
in front of him bent and tossed in the wind. The inky blackness of the
night was relieved by the flickering oil lamp in the road beyond the
graveyard and, in the distance, by the lights streaming out at the windows
of the houses. The light coming out of the house against which he stood
made a little cylinder of brightness among the pine trees through which
the raindrops fell gleaming and sparkling. An occasional flash of
lightning lit up the trees and the winding road, and the cannonry of the
skies rolled and echoed overhead. A kind of wild song sang in Sam's heart.

"I wish it would last all night," he thought, his mind fixed on the
singing of his mother in the dark house when he was a boy.

The door opened and a woman stepped out upon the veranda and stood before
him facing the storm, the wind tossing the soft kimono in which she was