Suddenly, in the west, a single vein of lightning darted down the sky.  A few trees shuddered as if to shake the gathering shadows from their bosoms.  Then tenfold stillness.  A bird flew past with a scream of terror, the marquis looking in vain to see a hawk pursuing it.  The distant moan of a cow came from the fields.  Not another sound, it seemed, was in the world.

In an instant the south-west was black.  A strange, remote murmur smote the colonel’s ear.  Overhead he could see but a strip of hot, hazy sky.  Had he seen the whole heavens, he could have done nothing but go on.  Quickly the murmur became an awful muttering, then a deafening roar.  The clatter, the rush, the crash of a tornado were behind him.  The groans of the very earth were about him.  The darkness of twilight was upon him.  Alice and Death were before him.  A cloudy demon, towering high as the heavens, in whose path nothing could live, was striding near and nearer.

Farm-houses were overthrown.  Trees were twisted off from their roots and torn to pieces.  Wild animals and birds were dashed to death.  Streams were emptied of their waters.  Human beings and horses and cattle were lifted into the air, hurled hither and thither and thrown dead upon the earth.

The whirlwind was following the line of the road!  Colonel Miller had no opportunity to see this, nor could he ride aside from that line if he chose.  He could but cry aloud, “My darling!  O God!  Alice!” and lash his horse forward.  The high, close forest would keep the wind from lifting his horse from the ground or himself from the saddle.  But the great trees crashed like thunder behind him.  Their fragments whirled above him.  Their branches fell before him.  The limb of a huge oak grazed his face, crushed his horse, and both rolled to the ground, blinded with dust, imprisoned within a barricade of splintered trunks and shattered tree-tops.

The marquis, from his high lookout, saw, before any one else, the approaching tornado, and, descending like a flash, he yet noted its direction.  As Alice reached the foot of his tree he was on the ground, had seized the pony’s mane, was half seated and half clinging in front of her, had snatched the reins from her hand, and was urging the frightened animal to its utmost speed.  Overcome with terror and confusion, Alice clung instinctively to the saddle and to him, without hearing his hurried advice to “stick like a old burdock.”

They shot like an arrow up the road.  The noise of the tempest was audible.  Closer it was coming, crushing, rending, annihilating all before it.  The way grew darker.  The terrified pony scarce touched the ground.  His only will was to go forward, and he still obeyed a firm use of the bit.  But who could hope to outrun a hurricane?  Twelve miles an hour against eighty!  The marquis heeded nothing.  Not far behind, the road was but a slash of fallen, writhing tree-tops.  The sweat dropped from his face.  He dared not look behind.