im out of momentary slumber.

The wind appeared to be extraordinarily perverse. It was almost as if,
knowing this was Celia's child, that Celia whose hatred it had felt
from the first, it took pleasure in punctuating his attempt to sleep
with shrieks and wailings, with piercing and unearthly cries.

Once it tossed a tumbleweed at the window. The great round human-like
head looked in and the child, opening his eyes upon it, broke into
piteous moaning.

The wind laughed, snatched the tumbleweed and tossed it on.

"The wind seems to be tryin' itself," complained Cyclona, getting up
once more and walking about with the child in her arms, singing as she
walked:

"Sleep, baby, sleep,
The big stars are the sheep,
The little stars are the lambs, I guess,
The wind is the shepherdess,
Sleep,
Baby,
Sleep."

The wind grew furious.

With a wild yell it burst the door of the dugout open.

Cyclona put the baby back on the bed, faced the fury of the wind a
moment, then cried out to it:

"Why can't you behave?"

Then she shut the door and placed a chair against it, taking the baby
up and again walking it back and forth, up and down and back and
forth.

"It's just tryin' itself," she repeated.

Again she endeavored with the coo of the lullaby to entice the child
into forgetting the wind.

But the wind was not to be forgotten. It turned into a tornado.
Failing of its effort to tear off the roof of the dugout, it stormed
tempestuously, fretfully; it raved, it grumbled, it groaned.

It screamed aloud with a fury not to be appeased or assuaged.

Cyclona had taken her seat in the rocking chair near the hearth. She
had laid the crying child in every possible position, across her knee
face down, sitting on one of her knees, her hand to his back with
gentle pats, and over her shoulder.

All to no avail. It seemed as if the child would never quit sobbing.
The sense of her helplessness joined with pity for his distress
saddened her to tears.

She was very tired. She had had charge of the child since early
morning, when Seth, compelled to attend to his work in the fields, had
left him to her.

She bent forward and looked out the window where the long fingers of
the ragged rosebush, torn by the wind, tapped ceaselessly at the pane.

"Wind," she implored. "Stop blowing. Don't you know the little baby's
mother has gone away? Don't you k