ng impulse to turn and run away, but that would mean
certain death. Her only hope was to keep her position firmly, and to
swing her skirts and scream. If the first steer swerved and passed her,
his followers might do so too.

He seemed of mammoth proportions as he lurched toward her. His head was
lowered, and his great hoofs pounded the ground like trip-hammers.
Closer! Closer! He was not twenty feet away. His big, crazy eyes seemed
to look straight into hers. Closer! Closer!--Then he changed his course
a trifle. In an instant he had passed her like a great fury. Others were
only a few feet behind him, and back of them was the compact mass of the
herd. She screamed louder and redoubled her waving. The thunder in the
heavens, and the thunder of the hoofs, drowned her voice so that she
could not even hear it herself. A dozen cattle passed her. Fifty cattle
passed her. She was in the midst of the herd which seemed to make a
solid, living wall on each side of her. The earth trembled beneath the
hammering of the hoofs. Her throat seemed ready to burst, and she was
certain that no sound came from her lips. It seemed a long time since
that first one had plunged toward her, but still the maddened beasts
advanced with lowered heads and lunging bodies. They did not seem to
turn aside, and each instant she expected to be struck down and trampled
under their feet. She could not even try to scream any longer, but still
she waved the skirts.

At last, slowly, she saw that the herd was thinning. Short gaps began to
appear between the animals. She knew that the herd had nearly passed.
Then the living walls on each side melted away behind her, and only
stragglers were left. Then these, too, were gone. The stampeding herd
had passed her, and she was still alive.

She turned dizzily toward Scylla.

The little invalid--the cripple--was standing straight up, close behind
her. For a second Martha doubted her eyes. The storm still raged, and
she thought it was a vagary of the lightning. She held her hands out,
though, and convinced herself that it was true. Scylla was standing on
her feet, for the first time in many years. The two girls threw their
arms around each other, and sank to their knees on the prairie. As they
said a prayer of thanks together, the uneven glare of the lightning,
which had kept up almost uninterruptedly ever since a few seconds before
the cattle reached them, died away. One or two feeble flashes followed,
and then