that she needed succour of some kind. She therefore abandoned all thought of reaching Rosebank and turned, inevitably, to the alter- native idea. She must go to Denis' mother! At least she would receive shelter from her, shelter until Denis returned. His mother would not refuse her that; and she hearteningly recollected that once Denis had said to her, "If the worst happened, you could come to my mother."
She would do that! She must do that. To get to Darroch she would be obliged to walk. She was not aware of any train which left Levenford for Darroch on Sunday
night; and if one did run she did not know its time of departure, nor had she the cost of her ticket. Two routes therefore offered themselves for her choice. The first was the main artery of communication between the two places, a broad main thoroughfare nearly five miles long, the other, a narrow, unfrequented road running directly across the open countryside, narrowing here to a lane and there to a mere track, but avoiding the circuitous windings of the outskirts of both towns, and shorter than the former by almost two miles. Her strength was now so insufficient, and her sufferings so great, that she decided to take the latter route because it was the lesser distance. She thought she could walk three miles.
Prostrate upon the ground and protected by the high wall of the courtyard she had not appreciated the full power of the storm, which was, indeed, the worst which had ravaged the Scottish Lowlands for over a century. The wind, springing from the southwest, tore past at the unprecedented velocity of sixty miles an hour. In the town only those driven by necessity were abroad, and of these only the hardiest remained for more than a few moments in the open. Slates torn from the roofs of houses sailed downwards through the air, each with the force and cutting violence of a falling guillotine; whole chimney pots were wrenched off, flung through the air entire, and dashed upon the cobblestones below; the large, thick, plate-glass window of the Building Society's office was blown into pieces, like dry parchment, by the force of the wind alone. Amongst the roar of the hurricane the reports of falling objects as they struck upon the streets came continuously, like a bombardment. In the Newtown the gable of a newly erected house was caved in by the blast and the wind, entering the aperture like a wedge, prised off the roof and seized it. Off flew the entire roof, its sides extended like the planing wings of a bird, soaring through the air, until finally the wind ceased to support it and it dived like a plummet into the black water of the estuary a full three hundred yards away.
In the low-lying parts of the town the ceaseless rain caused such flooding that entire areas lay under water; houses stood apart like isolated dwellings rising from a strange lagoon, and the deluge, rushing around them, percolated the walls, entered through doors and windows, and completely inundated the lower floors.
The lightning which ran riot over the surrounding countryside produced a less diffuse but more deadly havoc. A shepherd, herding on the Doran hills, was struck instantly dead; two farm servants sheltering under a tree were struck down and their charred bodies crushed by the fall of the riven tree; livestock suffered severely; countless sheep and cattle were killed as they lay in the open or sought a more precarious shelter under trees, and a full score of cattle
crouching against a wire fence were electrocuted by the conduit of the fluid current.
A thunderbolt fell, and, crashing into a sailing barque at anchor in Port Doran Bay, sank it instantly. Other ships, in the river mouth and in the Firth, dragged their anchors and broke their moorings and were battered by the waves as they ran aground on the Doran shore.
Unaware of all this, Mary slowly raised herself to her feet. The wind took hold of her and almost cast her down again, but she bore against it, and, inclining her body sharply into the teeth of the gale, set out through the pitch of the night. Her sodden garments flapped about her like drenched sails and hampered her movements, clinging bindingly to her legs at each step she took. As she left the front of her home a leaden gutter, stripped from the coping by a single gust, came hurdling viciously towards her, like a last malevolent gesture from the house; but, though it passed dangerously near her head, it missed her and buried itself deeply in the wet ground.
She had not proceeded a hundred yards before she was compelled to rest. Though this point marked the situation of the last lamppost of the road, now the darkness was unrelieved and, for a moment, she imagined the light had been blown out, but as she resumed her way, she tripped upon the prone column of the disrupted lamp. With head downwards she stumbled on, feeling her way like a blind woman and keeping the road only through her sense of direction and by her familiarity with it. The noise about her was frightful, so deafening that if she had shouted aloud she would not have heard her own voice. The wind, like some gigantic orchestra, traversed madly the gamut of its compass. The deep diapason of the pipe organ mingled with the reedy treble of clarionets; bugles shrilled against the bass of oboes; the wailing of violins, the clash of cymbals, the
booming of drums were blended together into an unearthly cacophony of dissonance.
Every now and then, out of the blackness, unseen objects struck her. Flying twigs of trees stung her face, torn-up branches and shrubs flung themselves against her. Once a soft tentacle entwined itself about her neck and arms. She shrieked with terror, lifting her soundless voice against the hurricane, thinking that living arms had corded themselves about her, but, as she raised her hands in panic, she discovered that she was enveloped by a sheaf of hay blown from some obliterated stack.
With the utmost difficulty she had now traversed about a mile of her journey, and, though she was not yet halfway towards her objective, the most fearful part lay immediately ahead. Here the road closed in almost to a pathway and wandered, unflanked by any guiding fence or boundary, without line of demarcation from
the adjacent woodland, through a thick grove of firs. This wood was always tenebrous, with gloomy trees that whispered elegies, but now, in this fearsome night, which itself lay around her like a dense forest, the wood became frightful and repulsive, like the central darkness, the very heart of the forest of the night. She shuddered to think of entering it. Once, when a child, upon an expedition with some others, she had lost herself amongst these stern, austere trees, had run amongst them, forlornly seeking her companions, and she now recalled with painful vividness her youthful terror, a terror which returned upon darker wings as, mustering all her courage and her strength, she plunged into the coppice.
It was almost impossible to trace the pathway. Gropingly she crept along, keeping both arms extended, with flat palms outstretched in front of her. This extension of her arms gave her an excruciating hurt in that side of her chest where her father had kicked her, but she was obliged to hold them so in order to protect her head and face from the contact of the trees, and to ascertain more exactly the direction of her laborious progress.
The wind which, in the open land, had maintained a constant direction, now whirled around the tree trunks with a hundred currents and eddies, in a manner which rendered direct forward movement impossible. Mary was tossed this way and that way, like a ship beating its course amongst a swirl of treacherous tides, without moon or stars to guide her in the perilous pitch of the night. She had
begun to wander from the path when, suddenly, an erratic vortex caught her, swept away her balance, and flung her violently to the left. She fell with all her weight, and the palm of her left hand impaled itself upon the dagger-sharp point of a low, broken fir branch which projected horizontally from the main trunk. For one agonising moment her hand remained nailed to the wood, then she plucked it free and staggered to her feet.
Onwards she went. She was now utterly lost. She wanted to get out of the wood but she could not. Dizzily she felt her way from tree to tree, the blood streaming from her wounded hand, permeated by terror, by the throbbing of her injured side and the recurrent pains within her body. Chilled to the bone, her wet hair streaming dankly, her skin infiltrated with rain water, she mazed about the wood in the darkness. She stumbled and got up, swayed backwards and staggered onwards, to the insane music of the tornado as it bellowed through the trees. The pandemonium of sound dinning upon her ears seemed of itself to swing her about, controlling her movements by its stupendous rhythm. Light-headedly she gyrated amongst the rending of uprooting trees, lost to everything but pain and her desire to escape from the horror of this besetting forest.