ith a silly smile on his face.

The door from the hall flew open. In the dusky opening the woman's
lean and masculine form looked wondrous tall; her hollow eyes burned
with unnatural fire; her thin and trembling lips writhed pitifully.

With her coming another awful flash and crash illumined the room and
shook the roof tree of the Inn.

"It's come! it's come!" she said, advancing into the-room. Her face
shone in the pallid, flickering light of the intermittent flashes, and
the loafers at the bar shrank away from her advance.

"I told ye how 'twould be, Lem Parraday!" cried the tavern keeper's
wife. "This is the end! This is the end!"

Another stroke of thunder rocked the house. Marm Parraday fell on her
knees in the sawdust and raised her clasped hands wildly. The act
loosened her stringy gray hair and it fell down upon her shoulders. A
wilder looking creature Janice Day had never imagined.

"Almighty Father!" burst from the quivering lips of the poor woman.
"Almighty Father, help us!"

"She's prayin'!" gasped a trembling voice back in the shrinking crowd.

"Help us and save us!" groaned the woman, her face and clasped hands
uplifted. "We hear Thy awful voice. We see the flash of Thy anger.
Ah!"

The thunder rolled again--ominously, suddenly, while the casements
rattled from its vibrations.

"_Forgive Lem and these other men for what they air doin', O Lord!_"
was the next phrase the startled spectators heard. "_They don't
deserve Thy forgiveness--but overlook 'em!_"

The Voice in the heavens answered again and drowned her supplication.
One man screamed--a shrill, high neigh like that of a hurt horse.
Janice caught a momentary glimpse of the pallid face of Joe Bodley
shrinking below the edge of the counter. There was no leer upon his
fat face now; it expressed nothing but terror.

Lem Parraday entered hastily. He caught his wife by her thin shoulders
just as she pitched forward. "Now, now, Marm! This ain't no way to
act," he said, soothingly.

The thunder muttered in the distance. Suddenly the flickering
lightning seemed less threatening. As quickly as it had burst, the
tempest passed away.

"My jimminy! She's fainted," Lem Parraday murmured, lifting the woman
in his strong arms.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE ENEMY RETREATS

As the Summer advanced visitors flocked to Polktown. From the larger
and better known tourist resorts on the New York side of the lake,
small parties had venture