rough the belt of sand-hills, and into the
thicket, where they crouched on its far side close down under the
projecting backbone. "The bushes will break the sand, and the ridge will
keep us from being buried in it," she said. "I dursn't stay on the
shore, for the water'll rise."

The words were hardly spoken before the tornado was upon them, and the
air was filled with the flying sand, so that they could hardly breathe.
Half choked, they beat with their hands before them to catch a breath.
Then came a roar, and for an instant, distant as they were, they caught
a glimpse of the crest of the great wave that followed the whirlwind. It
seemed to them mountain-high, and ready to ingulf the entire land. With
a rushing sound it plunged over the keeper's house, broke against the
lower story of the tower, hissed across the sand, swallowed the
sand-hills, and swept to their very feet, then sullenly receded with
slow, angry muttering. A gale of wind came next, singularly enough from
another direction, as if to restore the equipoise of the atmosphere. But
the tornado had gone on inland, where there were trees to uproot, and
houses to destroy, and much finer entertainment generally.

As soon as they could speak, "Where are the two out in the sail-boat?"
asked the Sister.

"God knows!" answered Melvyna. "The last time I noticed their sail they
were about a mile outside of the reef."

"I will go and see."

"Go and see! Are you crazy? You can never get through that water."

"The saints would help me, I think," said the little Sister.

She had risen, and now stood regarding the watery waste with the usual
timid look in her gentle eyes. Then she stepped forward with her
uncertain tread, and before the woman by her side comprehended her
purpose she was gone, ankle-deep in the tide, knee-deep, and finally
wading across the sand up to her waist in water toward the lighthouse.
The great wave was no deeper, however, even there. She waded to the door
of the tower, opened it with difficulty, climbed the stairway, and
gained the light-room, where the glass of the windows was all shattered,
and the little chamber half full of the dead bodies of birds, swept
along by the whirlwind and dashed against the tower, none of them
falling to the ground or losing an inch of their level in the air as
they sped onward, until they struck against some high object, which
broke their mad and awful journey. Holding on by the shattered casement,
Sister St.