camera, save when--as by the opening of a snapshot
shutter--an instantaneous view of the valley was fixed on Katherine's
startled brain by the lightning ripping in fiery fissures down the
sky. Then she saw the willows bending and whipping in the wind, saw
the gnarled old sycamores wrestling with knotted muscles, saw the
broad river writhing and tossing its swollen and yellow waters. Then,
blackness again--and, like the closing click of this world-wide
camera, there followed a world-shaking crash of thunder.

Katherine would have been terrified but for the stimulant within. She
crouched low upon her horse, held a close rein, petted Nelly, talked
to her and kept her going at her best--onward--onward--onward--through
the covered wooden bridge that spanned Buck Creek--through the little
old village of Sleepy Eye--up Red Man's Ridge--and at last, battered,
buffeted, half-drowned, she and Nelly drew up at the familiar stone
gateway of The Sycamores.

She dismounted, led Nelly in and tied her among the beeches away from
the drive. Then cautiously, palpitantly, she groped her way in the
direction of the Blake cabin, avoiding the open lest the lightning
should betray her presence. At length she came to the edge of a
cleared space in which she knew the cabin stood. But she could see
nothing. The cabin was just a cube of blackness imbedded in this great
blackness which was the night. She peered intently for a lighted
window; she listened for the lesser thunder of a waiting automobile.
But she could see nothing but the dark, hear nothing but the dash of
the rain, the rumble of the thunder, the lashing and shrieking of the
wind.

Her heart sank. No one was here. Her guesses all were wrong.

But she crept toward the house, following the drive. Suddenly, she
almost collided with a big, low object. She reached forth a hand. It
fell upon the tire of an automobile. She peered forward and seemed to
see another low shape. She went toward it and felt. It was a second
car.

She dashed back among the trees, and thus sheltered from the revealing
glare of the lightning, almost choking with excitement, she began to
circle the house for signs which would locate in what room were the
men within. She paused before each side and peered closely at it, but
each side in turn presented only blackness, till she came to the lee
of the house.

This, too, was dark for the first moment. Then in a lower window,
which she knew to be the window of Blake