s, the creaking of timbers and soughing of leaves, that sank
and fell ere you could yet distinguish them. And then it came on to
blow. For two hours it blew strongly. At the time the sun should have
set the wind had increased; in fifteen minutes darkness shut down, even
the white sands lost their outlines, and sea and shore and sky lay in
the grip of a relentless and aggressive power.

Within his cabin, by the leaping light of his gusty fire, North sat
alone. His first curiosity passed, the turmoil without no longer
carried his thought beyond its one converging centre. SHE had come to
him on the wings of the storm, even as she had been borne to him on the
summer fog-cloud. Now and then the wind shook the cabin, but he heeded
it not. He had no fears for its safety; it presented its low gable to
the full fury of the wind that year by year had piled, and even now was
piling, protecting buttresses of sand against it. With each succeeding
gust it seemed to nestle more closely to its foundations, in the whirl
of flying sand that rattled against its roof and windows. It was
nearly midnight when a sudden thought brought him to his feet. What if
SHE were exposed to the fury of such a night as this? What could he do
to help her? Perhaps even now, as he sat there idle, she--Hark! was not
that a gun--No? Yes, surely!

He hurriedly unbolted the door, but the strength of the wind and the
impact of drifted sand resisted his efforts. With a new and feverish
strength possessing him he forced it open wide enough to permit his
egress when the wind caught him as a feather, rolled him over and over,
and then, grappling him again, held him down hard and fast against the
drift. Unharmed, but unable to move, he lay there, hearing the
multitudinous roar of the storm, but unable to distinguish one familiar
sound in the savage medley. At last he managed to crawl flat on his
face to the cabin, and refastening the door, threw himself upon his bed.

He was awakened from a fitful dream of his Cousin Maria. She with a
supernatural strength seemed to be holding the door against some
unseen, unknown power that moaned and strove without, and threw itself
in despairing force against the cabin. He could see the lithe
undulations of her form as she alternately yielded to its power, and
again drew the door against it, coiling herself around the log-hewn
doorpost with a hideous, snake-like suggestion. And then a struggle
and a heavy blow, w