r walk that day led them along the hills
until they could see the city shimmering far away in the valley. "I
wonder how things are going on there," he said.

And then came a change in the weather. "Come out and see the clouds,"
she cried; and behold! they were a sombre purple in the north and east,
streaming up to ragged edges at the zenith. And as they went up the hill
these hurrying streamers blotted out the sunset. Suddenly the wind set
the beech-trees swaying and whispering, and Elizabeth shivered. And then
far away the lightning flashed, flashed like a sword that is drawn
suddenly, and the distant thunder marched about the sky, and even as
they stood astonished, pattering upon them came the first headlong
raindrops of the storm. In an instant the last streak of sunset was
hidden by a falling curtain of hail, and the lightning flashed again,
and the voice of the thunder roared louder, and all about them the world
scowled dark and strange.

Seizing hands, these children of the city ran down the hill to their
home, in infinite astonishment. And ere they reached it, Elizabeth was
weeping with dismay, and the darkling ground about them was white and
brittle and active with the pelting hail.

Then began a strange and terrible night for them. For the first time in
their civilised lives they were in absolute darkness; they were wet and
cold and shivering, all about them hissed the hail, and through the long
neglected ceilings of the derelict home came noisy spouts of water and
formed pools and rivulets on the creaking floors. As the gusts of the
storm struck the worn-out building, it groaned and shuddered, and now a
mass of plaster from the wall would slide and smash, and now some
loosened tile would rattle down the roof and crash into the empty
greenhouse below. Elizabeth shuddered, and was still; Denton wrapped his
gay and flimsy city cloak about her, and so they crouched in the
darkness. And ever the thunder broke louder and nearer, and ever more
lurid flashed the lightning, jerking into a momentary gaunt clearness
the steaming, dripping room in which they sheltered.

Never before had they been in the open air save when the sun was
shining. All their time had been spent in the warm and airy ways and
halls and rooms of the latter-day city. It was to them that night as if
they were in some other world, some disordered chaos of stress and
tumult, and almost beyond hoping that they should ever see the city ways
again.