ee persons, driven to harbor
from different parts of the cemetery. The shower increased to a storm,
the lattices were lashed by the rain and a steady stream poured from the
eaves. The althaea and snowberry bushes in the flower-pots, and even the
stunted box-edges along the paths, swayed in the wind. It grew quite
dark in the summer-house, shaded by two or three old hemlocks, and it
was only by the lightning-flashes that Putnam could make out the
features of the little company of refugees. They stood in the middle of
the building, to avoid the sheets of rain blown in at the doors in
gusts, huddling around a pump that was raised on a narrow stone
platform--not unlike the daughters of Priam clustered about the great
altar in the penetralia: Praecipites atra ceu tempestate columbae.

They consisted of a young girl, an elderly woman with a trowel and
watering-pot, and a workman in overalls, who carried a spade and had
perhaps been interrupted in digging a grave. The platform around the
pump hardly gave standing room for a fourth. Putnam accordingly took his
seat on a tool-chest near one of the entrances, and, while the soft
spray blew through the lattices over his face and clothes, he watched
the effect of the lightning-flashes on the tossing, dripping trees of
the cemetery-grounds.

Soon a shout was heard and down one of the gravel-walks, now a miniature
river, rushed a Newfoundland dog, followed by a second man in overalls.
Both reached shelter soaked and lively. The dog distributed the contents
of his fur over our party by the pump, nosed inquiringly about, and then
subsided into a corner. Second laborer exchanged a few words with first
laborer, and melted into the general silence. The slight flurry caused
by their arrival was only momentary, while outside the storm rose higher
and inside it grew still darker. Now and then some one said something in
a low tone, addressed rather to himself than to the others, and lost in
the noise of the thunder and rain.

But in spite of the silence there seemed to grow up out of the situation
a feeling of intimacy between the members of the little community in the
summer-house. The need of shelter--one of the primitive needs of
humanity--had brought them naturally together and shut them up "in a
tumultuous privacy of storm." In a few minutes, when the shower should
leave off, their paths would again diverge, but for the time being they
were inmates and held a household relation to one