The first day he was away was dreadful sultry; the sun went down away over the woods in a kind of a red-hot fog, and it seemed as though the stars were dull and coppery at night; even the whip-poor-wills was too hot to sing; nothin’ but a doleful screech-owl quavered away, a half a mile off, a good hour, steady.  When it got to be mornin’, it didn’t seem no cooler; there wa’n’t a breath of wind, and the locusts in the woods chittered as though they was fryin’.  Our hired man was an old Scotchman, by name Simon Grant; and when he’d got his breakfast, he said he’d go down the clearin’ and bring up a load of brush for me to burn.  So he drove off with the team, and, havin’ cleared up the dishes, I put baby to sleep, and took my pail to the barn to milk the cow,—­for we kept her in a kind of a home-lot like, a part that had been cleared afore we come, lest she should stray away in the woods, if we turned her loose; she was put in the barn, too, nights, for fear some stray wild-cat or bear might come along and do her a harm.  So I let her into the yard, and was jest a-goin’ to milk her when she begun to snort and shake, and finally giv’ the pail a kick, and set off, full swing, for the fence to the lot.  I looked round to see what was a-comin’, and there, about a quarter of a mile off, I see the most curus thing I ever see before or since,—­a cloud as black as ink in the sky, and hangin’ down from it a long spout like, something like an elephant’s trunk, and the whole world under it looked to be all beat to dust.  Before I could get my eyes off on’t, or stir to run, I see it was comin’ as fast as a locomotive; I heerd a great roar and rush,—­first a hot wind, and then a cold one, and then a crash,—­an’ ’twas all as dark as death all round, and the roar appeared to be a-passin’ off.

I didn’t know for quite a spell where I was.  I was flat on my face, and when I come to a little, I felt the grass against my cheek, and I smelt the earth; but I couldn’t move, no way; I couldn’t turn over, nor raise my head more’n two inches, nor draw myself up one.  I was comfortable so long as I laid still; but if I went to move, I couldn’t.  It wasn’t no use to wriggle; and when I’d settled that, I jest went to work to figger out where I was and how I got there, and the best I could make out was that the barn-roof had blowed off and lighted right over me, jest so as not to hurt me, but so’t I could’nt move.

Well, there I lay.  I knew baby was asleep in the trundle-bed, and there wa’n’t no fire in the house; but how did I know the house wa’n’t blowed down?  I thought that as quick as a flash of lightnin’; it kinder struck me; I couldn’t even see, so as to be certain!  I wasn’t naterally fond of children, but somehow one’s own is different, and baby was just gettin’ big enough to be pretty; and there I lay, feelin’ about as bad as I could, but hangin’ on to one hope,—­that old Simon, seein’ the tornado, would come pretty soon to see where we was.