The Sauk Centre herald. (Sauk Centre, Stearns County, Minn.) 1886-current, 1913-02-13

this noise and all others near and dis
tant, was suddenly lost in a loud clat.
ter OF writhing and twisting boughs
which set the forest in roar and
seemed to heave the air about them.
A wind had swooped down from the
east. bending everything before it and
rafting the huge oval on which their
eyes were fixed as though it would
tear 1t from its hinges.
The three caught at each others
hands in dismay. The storm had come
just on the verge of the enterprise,
and no one might guess the result.
will he dare? Will he dare?"
whispered Doris, and Oswald an
swered. though 1t seemed next to Inn
possible that he could have heard her:
"He will dare. But will he survive
1t! Mr.. Challoner," he suddenly shout
ed In that gentleman's ear, what time
10 1t now?".
M. Challoner, disengaging himself
rom their mutual grasp, knelt down
Dy the lantern to consult his watch.
One minute to eight" he shouted
back.
The forest was now q pandemonium
Great boughs, split from their parent
trunks, fell crashing to the ground in
all directions. The scream of the wind
reused echoes which repeated them
selves, here, there and everywhere. No
rain had fallen yet, but the sight of the
clouds skurrying pellmell through the
ated such havoc in the already over
strained minds of the three onlookers
that they hardly needed, when with
clatter and crash which at another
time would have startled them into
fight, the swaying oval before them
was whir'ed from its hinges and
thrown hack against the trees already
bending under the onslaught of the
tempest. Destruction seemed the nat
ural accompaniment of the moment
end the only prayer which sprang to
Oswald's lips was that the motor
whose throb yet fingered in their
blood though no longer taken in by
the ear, would either refuse to work
or prove insufficient to lift the heavy
car into this seething tumult of war
ring forces. His brothers life hung
In the balance against his fame, anG
he could not but choose life for him
Yet, as the multitudinous sounds about
him yielded for a moment to that
brothers shout, and he knew that the
moment had come, which would soon
settle all, he found himself staring at
the elliptical edge of the hangar, with
an anticipation which held in it as
much terror as JOY, for the end of
great hope or the beginning of great
triumph was compressed into this
trembling instant and if
Great God! he sees it! They all
see it! Plainly against that portion OF
the disk which still lifted itself above
the further wall, curious moving
mass appears. lengthens, takes on
shape, then shoots suddenly aloft
clearing the eneircling tops of the
bending, twisting and tormented trees.
straight into the heart of the gale.
where for one breat. 'nss moment II
whirls madly about ike thing dis
traught, then in slow but triumphant
obedience to the master hand that
guides it, steadies and mounts majes
tica1ly upward till it is lost to their
view in the depths of impenetrable
darkness.
Orlando Brotherson has accom-.
plished his task. He has invented
mechanism which can send an air-car
straight up from its mooring place.
AS the three hers realize this, Os.
wald utters CRY of triumph, and Dor
is throws herself into Mr. Challoner's
arms. Then they ali stand transffxed
again, waiting for a descent which
may never come.
But bark: new sound, mingling it's
clatter with ell the others. 1t is the
rain. Quick, maddening, drenching,
it comes; enveloping them in wet in a
moment. Can they hold their faces
up against it!
And the wind! Surely it must toss
that aerial messenger before it and
fling it back to earth, broken and
despised toy.
"Orlando?" went up in shrek. Cor.
lando?"
Oh, for a ray of light in those far
off heavens: For hull in the ire
mendous sounds shivering the heavens
and shaking the earth! But the tenn
pest RACES on, and they can only wait,
five minutes, ten minutes, looking,
hoping, fearing, without thought of
self and almost without thought of
each other, till suddenly as it had
come, the rain ceases and the wind,
with one final wall Of rage and defeat.
rushes away into the west, leaving be-
hind it sudden silence which, to
their terrified hearts, seems almost
more dreadful to bear than the accu.
mulated noises Of the moment just
gone.
Orlando was in that shout Of natural
forces, but he is not in this stiffness.
They look aloft, but the heavens are
void. Emptiness is where life was.
Oswald begins to sway, and Doris, re-
Numbering him now and him only,
has thrown her strong young arm
about him, when-what is this sound
they hear high up, high up, in the rap
idly clearing vault of the heavens! A
throb-a steady pant-drawing near
and yet nearer-entering the circlet OF
- l.