and fury of
the tempest.

It was a bare chance that a scuttle on some one of the adjacent roofs
might be, at least, not fastened down.

Fighting the buffeting wind, the scourging rain, and her panic
fright, she gained the scuttle of the roof to the west, but found it
immovable.

She tried the next roof, with no better fortune.

Panting, even sobbing a little in her terror, she scrambled on through
a sort of nightmarish progress to the next roof, and on and on to the
next and the next.

She kept on reckoning, and couldn't have said how many roofs she had
crossed, when at length she discovered a scuttle that was actually
ajar, propped wide to the pounding flood; and without pause to wonder
at this circumstance, or what might be her reception and how to
account for herself, she swung down into that hospitable black hole,
found footing on the ladder, let herself farther down--and by
mischance dislodged the iron arm supporting the cover.

It fell with a bang and a click, and Sally barely escaped crushed
fingers by releasing the rim and tumbling incontinently to the floor.

Happily she hadn't far to fall, wasn't hurt, and hastily picking
herself up, stood half-dazed, listening for sounds of alarm within the
house.

Coincidently the storm sounded a crisis in a series of tremendous,
shattering crashes, so heavy and so prolonged that all the world
seemed to rock and vibrate, echoing the uproar like a gigantic
sounding-board.

This passed; but from the body of the house Sally heard nothing--only
the crepitation of rain on the roof and the sibilant splatter of drops
trickling from her saturated skirts into the puddle that had formed
beneath the scuttle.

She stood in what at first seemed unrelieved darkness--but for
glimpses revealed by the incessant slash and flare of lightning--at
one end of a short hallway, by the rail of a staircase well. Three or
four doors opened upon this hall; but she detected no sign of any
movement in the shadows, and still heard no sound.

Wondering--and now, as she began to appreciate her position, almost as
unhappy in her refuge as she had been in the storm--Sally crept to the
rail and peered down. But her straining senses detected nothing below
more than shadows, solitude, and silence; which, however, failed to
convey reassurance; the fact of the open scuttle would seem to
indicate that she hadn't stumbled into an uninhabited house.

Stealthily she proceeded to investigate the sever