Drenched to the skin on the instant, the
two men and the boy stumbled forward through the gray wake of the
storm.
"What's come of our trail now?" shouted the judge, but the sound
of his voice was lost in the rush of the hurrying winds and the
roar of the airy cascades that fell about them.
An hour passed. There was light under the trees, faint,
impalpable without visible cause, but they caught the first
sparkle of the rain drops on leaf and branch; they saw the
silvery rivulets coursing down the mossy trunks of old trees;
last of all through a narrow rift in the clouds, the sun showed
them its golden rim, and day broke in the steaming woods. With
the sun, with a final rush of the hurrying wind, a final torrent,
the storm spent itself, and there was only the drip from bough
and leaf, or pearly opalescent points of moisture on the drenched
black trunks of maple and oak; a sapphire sky, high arched,
remote overhead; and the June day all about.
"What's come of they trail now?" cried the judge again. "He'll
be a good dog that follows it through, these woods!"
They had paused on a thickly wooded hillside.
"We've come eight or ten miles if we have come a rod, Price,"
said Mahaffy, "and I am in favor of lying by for the day. When
it comes dark we can go on again."
The judge readily acquiesced in this, and they presently found a
dense thicket which they cautiously entered. Reaching the center
of the tangled growth, they beat down the briers and bushes, or
cut them away with their knives, until they had a little cleared
space where they could build a fire.
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