"snake" should
curl in the darkness against her ankles; but once in the cabin, with a
candle lighted, she could not see the lightning, so she was able to
laugh at herself; when Maurice went out for the rest of the cushions,
she charged him to _hurry_! "The storm will be here in a minute!" she
called to him. And he called back:

"I'll only be a second!"

She stood in the doorway looking after him, and saw his figure outlined
against the glimmer of their fire, which had already felt the spatter of
the coming storm and was dying down; then, even as she looked, he seemed
to plunge forward, and fall--the thud of that fall was like a blow on
her throat! She gasped, "Maurice--" And again, "_Maurice!_ Have you hurt
yourself?"

He did not rise. A splash of rain struck her face; the mountain darkness
was slit by a rapier of lightning, and there was a sudden violent
illumination; she saw the tree and the cushions, and Maurice on the
ground--then blackness, and a tremendous crash of thunder.

"Maurice!" she called. "Maurice!" The branches over the roof began to
move and rustle, and there was a sudden downpour of rain; the camp fire
went out, as if an extinguisher had covered it. She stood in the doorway
for a breathless instant, then ran back into the cabin, and, catching
the candle from the table, stepped out into the blackness; instantly the
wind bore the little flame away!--then seemed to grip her, and twist her
about, and beat her back into the house. In her terror she screamed his
name; and as she did so, another flash of lightning showed her his
figure, motionless on the ground.

"_He is dead_" she said to herself, in a whisper. "What shall I do?"
Then, suddenly, she knew what to do: she remembered that she had noticed
a lantern hanging on the wall near the door; and now something impelled
her to get it. In the stifling darkness of the shack she felt her way to
it, held its oily ring in her hand, thought, frantically, of matches,
groped along toward the mantelpiece, stumbled over a chair--and clutched
at the match box! Something made her open the isinglass slide, strike a
match, and touch the blackened wick with the sulphurous sputter of
flame,--the next moment, with the lighted lantern in her hand, she was
out in the sheeting blackness of the rain!--running!--running!--toward
that still figure by the deadened fire. Just before she reached it a
twig rolled under her foot, and she said, "A _snake_,"--but she did not
fli