Bruce and Elinor at the other end of the barn were
apparently absorbed in the spectacle, and did not hear her. Judith
cuddled close and Patricia felt her hands go cold, but she could only
clasp them harder to reassure her--no words could reach her ear.

The wind, driving furiously from the west, flung the clouds before
it--great sullen masses of flying gray vapor that now broke into
drenching torrents, shaking the barn and tearing at the casements. In
a moment the place was dark with its roar and the rumble of coming fury
undertoned the shrill screams of the greedy tempest wind.

Patricia held Judith close, with her own heart beating tumultuously to
the rhythm of the storm. Hard rattling drops castinetted at the glass,
beating an accompaniment to the roar of the racing clouds. For a
moment all was black, then, as the whirling cloud masses swept apart,
the pelting drops lulled and a gray twilight full of ominous murmurs
filled the place. Before Patricia could frame the swift thought that
the storm was passing, darkness swept over them again, and the fierce
scream of the relentless wind tore at the corners of the barn. The
rain beat, deluged, engulfed the out-of-doors; it drummed gayly with
diminishing ferocity; then it roared sullenly, flooding the rain spouts
to bursting; it raged again, with the scream of the wind growing
higher, and snapping branches flung themselves past the gray squares of
the windows, flying leaves pasted wet green blurs on the streaming
glass. Judith shuddered.

"Oh, Patricia!" she cried in Patricia's ear, but the words died into
the tempest.

The sound of running water outside their shelter gradually forced its
way into the tumult. The road was a yellow waterway; the brook tore
above the limit of its deep banks into a widening saffron river among
the green meadows, which showed in the ghastly light in crude and ugly
colors.

Then, suddenly as it had come, the storm passed, trailing dark,
yellow-gray, ragged clouds in its wake. The light came back and the
awed girls at the little window saw below them in the emerald meadows,
wide ugly yellow splotches that grew as they looked, meeting other
growing patches of swirling yellow water from the lanes and roads.
Trees showed fresh wounds and masses of broken branches clotted the
discolored waters of the brook. Birds called excitedly and flew
exultantly about in the limpid air. The sun flung gay greens and
golds. The storm was past.