endeavored to make
her tone convincing. "Let's have tea in the heirloom before we part with
it," she suggested brightly. "It's never been used that I can remember."

"It's ugly enough to be valuable," Toomey observed, eyeing the teapot as
she took it from the top of the bookcase.

"Solid, nearly, and came over in the _Mayflower_," Mrs. Toomey replied
proudly. "We'll have tea and toast and codfish."

"The information is superfluous." Toomey sniffed the air and made a wry
face. "I'd as soon eat billposter's paste as codfish."

"To-night we'll have steak--thick, like that--" Mrs. Toomey measured
with her thumb and finger as she went into the kitchen.

Toomey eyed the codfish darkly when his wife placed it on the table.

"Sit down, Jap," she urged. "The tea will be steeped in just a second.
Don't wait--" A scream completed the sentence.

Toomey overturned his chair as he rushed to the kitchen. He arrived in
time to see the lid of the priceless heirloom disappearing in a puddle
of pewter. It seemed to the Toomeys that the Fates had singled them out
as special objects for their malevolence.

The wind continued to blow as though it meant never to stop. It was a
wind of which the people of the East who speak awesomely of their own
"gales" and "tempest" wot not.

This wind which had kept Prouty indoors for close to a week came out of
a cloudless sky, save for a few innocent looking streaks on the western
horizon. It had blown away everything that would move. All the loose
papers had sailed through the air to an unknown destination--Nebraska,
perhaps--while an endless procession of tumble weed had rolled in the
same direction from an apparently inexhaustible supply in the west.

Housewives who had watched their pile of tin cans move on to the next
lot found their satisfaction short-lived, for as quickly they acquired
the rubbish that belonged to their neighbor on the other side. Shingles
flew off and chimney bricks, and ends of corrugated iron roofing slapped
and banged as though frantic to be loose. Houses shivered on their
foundations, and lesser buildings lay on their sides. Clouds of dust
obscured the sun at intervals, and the sharp-edged gravel driven before
the gale cut like tiny knives.

Any daring chicken that ventured from its coop slid away as if it were
on skates. Pitchforks were useless, and those who had horses to feed
carried the hay in sacks. The caged inhabitants stood at their windows
and made caustic