Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1912-01-31

started down the canon, plunging des-
perately through the trees, leaping the
brook from side to side where it mar
rowed, seekir g ever the easiest way.
She struggled on, painting with sud
den inexplicable terror almost as bad
as that which had overwhelmed her
an hour beforehand growing more
intense every moment. to such a tragic
pass had the day and its happenings
brought her.
Poor girl, awful experience really
was to be hers that day. The fates
sported with her-bodily fear, out
ragged modesty, mental anguish and
now the terror Of the storm.
The clouds seemed to sink lower.
until they almost closed about her.
Long gray ghostly arms reached out
toward her. 1t grew darker and dark
er in the depths Of the canon. She
screamed aloud-in vain.
Suddenly the rolling thunder peaIs
concentrated, balls of fire leaped out
of the heavens and struck the noun
tains where she could actually see
them. There were not words to de-
scribe the tremendous crashings
which seemed to splinter the hills, to
be succeeded by brief periods of 81
lence, to be followed by louder and
more terrific detonations.
In one of those appalling alterna-
tons from sound to silence she heard
a human cry-an answering cry to
hnr own II aop,o frOro +bo hill. -
hind her. 1t must proceed, she
thought, from the man. She could
not MEET that man, although she
craved human companionship as never
before, she did not want his. She could
not bear it. Better the wrath Of
God, the fury Of the tempest.
Needless of the sharp note of warn
ing, of appeal, in the voice ere it was
drowned by another roll Of thunder,
she plunged on in the darkness. The
canon narrowed here; she made her
way down the Lodges, leaping reck-
lessly from rock to rock, slipping,
falling, grazing now one side, now
the other, hurting herself forward with
white face and bruised body and torn
hands and throbbing heart that would
fain burst it's bonds. There was once
an ancient legend, a human creature,
menaced by all the furies, pitilessly
pursued by every malefic spirit of
earth and air; like him this sweet
young girl innocent, lovely, erstwhile
happy, fed before the storm.
Then the heavens burst, and the
fountains OF the great deeps were
broken open and with absolute lit
teralness the foods descended. The
bursting clouds, torn asunder by the
wild winds, driven by the pent-up
lightning within their black and turgid
breasts, disburdened themselves. The
water came down, as it did of old
when God washed the face of the
world, in a food. The narrow Of the
canon was filled ten, twenty, thirty
feet in a moment by the cloud burst.
The black water rolled and foamed,
surging like the rapids at Niagara.
The body of the girl, utterly unpre-
pared, was caught, up in moment and
flung like bolt from catapult down
the seething sea filled with the trunks
of the trees and the debris of the
mountains, tossing about humanity in
the wild confusion. She struck out
strongly swimming more because OF
the instinct of life than for any other
reason. A helpless atom in the boil
ing flood, growing every minute great
er and greater as the angry skies dis
gorged themselves of their pent-up
torrents upon her devoted head.