nd saw a row of four tall
fir trees, which stood out like sentinels, on a ridge of the mountain,
in the very path of the storm, turn over like nine-pins, one after the
other, and tearing up the soil with their roots, slip down the
mountain-side, dragging with them an avalanche of earth. His eye darted
to the cottage with a sudden fear. Even as he looked, the wind was
lifting some of the slates on the roof, rattling them, loosening them,
and in a few moments would scatter them around like chaff, chaff that
would bring death to any on whom it should chance to light. With an odd,
calculating look, the old man turned again to his digging, and,
breathless as before, shovelled out the earth from the hole, with a
speed of which his stiff and feeble frame would have been thought
incapable; while now and again, without ceasing his work, he darted a
backward glance at the doomed cottage. It ought to stand until the hole
was dug; and at least in the digging there was a chance of safety: in
going back to fetch the baby now, there was none.

After about five minutes, with a hideous yell, the demon tore in such
fury across the mountain-side, that the old man would have been carried
off his feet in a moment, and swept with the rest of the _debris_ into
the valley, but that he threw himself on the ground, clutching tightly
with his fingers the edge of the hole he had dug. In the bottom of the
hole a thistle-down lay unmoved. When the lull came, and he could raise
his head, having escaped injury or death from falling stocks and stones,
he darted over his shoulder a glance of awful anxiety at the cottage--of
such anxiety as a strong man may reach to the depths of but once or
twice in his prime. The roof of the cottage was gone; there were no
fragments, for the wind was a clean sweeper; it had bodily vanished. The
walls stood. He dragged himself unsteadily to his feet, and looked
about for his spade. It was nowhere to be seen; the besom of the gale
had whirled it to some unknown limbo.

The hole was still not quite a foot and a half deep, and would not
preserve the cradle, if placed therein, from the destroyer. He shuffled
back to the cottage with awkward, hasty steps. The baby had cried itself
to sleep, and lay in its cradle in the corner, unconscious of the ruin
of its home. The old man went to the hearth, on which the fire had been
blown out, and from under the ashes dragged out a battered fire-shovel,
its edge worn away, its handle l