with the
moon for supremacy, and from a leaden wall along the southeastern sky,
came the long reverberating growl of thunder, that told where the
electric batteries had opened fire. A vague foreboding, which for
several days had haunted Beryl's mind, now pressed so heavily upon her,
that she hurried back to the station, which was near the edge of the
town; and more than once she started nervously at sight of grotesque
shadows cast by the trees across the sandy road.

The streets were deserted, and lights gleamed only in upper windows of
apartments, where sick sufferers tossed, or tender mothers sang soft
lullabys to restless babies crooning in their cribs. Now and then a
sudden gust of wind shook the yellow berries from the china trees, that
bordered the pavements, and very soon the moonshine faded, then flashed
fitfully, and finally vanished, as the blackening cloud swept over the
face of earth and sky. The watchman dozed on his post of observation; a
porter slept on a baggage truck under the awning, and as Beryl peeped
into the telegraph office, she heard the snoring of the operator, whose
head rested upon the table close to the silent instrument. She listened
to the ticking of a clock in the ticket office, but could not see its
face; wondered how late it was, and how long she had been absent.
Feeling very lonely and restless she closed the door, and sat down in
the deserted waiting-room, glad of the companionship of a
tortoise-shell cat which was curled up on a chair next her own.

Gradually the storm approached, and she thought that an hour had
elapsed, when the dust-tainted smell of rain came with the rush of cold
air. There was no steady gale, but the tempest broke in frantic
spasmodic gusts, as though it had lost its reckoning, and
simultaneously assaulted all the points of the compass; while the
lightning glared almost continuously, and the roar of the thunder was
uninterrupted. Now and then a vivid zig-zag flash gored the intense
darkness with its baleful blue death-light, followed by a crash,
appalling as if the battlements of heaven had been shattered. Once the
whole air seemed ablaze, and the simultaneous shock of the detonation
was so violent, that Beryl involuntarily sank on her knees, and hid her
eyes on a chair. The rain fell in torrents, that added a solemn sullen
swell to the diapason of the thunder fugue, and by degrees a delicious
coolness crept into the cisterns of the night.

When the cloud had