up pretty soon. I wonder if I
hadn't had that dream two nights ago about that picture I saw in a book,
when I was a little chap, if I'd had this fool's cowardice about being out
here alone today. And what was it that made me look over all those papers
in my vault box last night? I have helped Careyville some, and the library
I built will have a good endowment when I'm gone, and so will the
children's park, and the Temperance Societies. Maybe I've not lived in
vain, if I have been an exacting Jew. I never asked for the blood in my
pound of flesh, anyhow. I wonder where Champers can be."

He listened intently and thought he heard someone coming around the bend
down the darkening way.

"That's he, I guess, now," he said.

Then he turned his face toward the wide prairie unrolling to the westward.
Overhanging it were writhing clouds, hurled hither and thither, twisted,
frayed, and burst asunder by the titanic forces of the upper air, and all
converging with centripetal violence toward one vast maelstrom. Its long,
funnel-shaped form dipped and lifted, trailing back and forth like some
sensate thing. With it came an increasing roar from the clashing of timber
up the valley. The vivid shafts of lightning and the blackness that
followed them made the scene terrific with Nature's majestic madness.

"I must get shelter somewhere," Jacobs said. "I am sorry Champers failed
me. I wanted his counsel before I slipped up on Wyker tonight. I thought I
heard him coming just now. Maybe he's waiting for me under cover. I'll go
down and see."

The roar of the cyclone grew louder and the long swinging funnel lifted
and dipped and lifted again, as the awful forces of the air hurled it
onward.

Down at the sharp bend in the road Thomas Smith was crouching, just where
the rift in the bank opened to the creek, and the face of the man was not
good to look upon nor to remember.

"I'll show Darley Champers how well my left hand works. There'll be no
telltale scar left on his face when I'm through, and he can tumble right
straight down to the water from here and on to hell, and Wyker's joint may
bear the blame. Damned old Dutchman, to turn me out now. I set him up in
business when I had money. Here comes Champers now."

The storm-cloud burst upon the hill at that moment. John Jacobs' horse
leaped forward on the steep slope, slid, and fell to its knees. As it
sprang up again the two men could not see each other, for a flash of
lightning bli