Father’s dressing-room was a windowed closet, in the corner space beside the deep, old-fashioned chimney.  It had hooks and shelves in one end, and a round shaving-stand and a chair in the other.  We had to pull down all his clothes and pile them upon chairs, and stop up the window with an old blanket.  A pane was cracked, and the wind, although its force was slanted here, had blown it in, and the fine driven spray was dashed across, diagonally, into the very farthest corner.

In the room a gentle cascade descended beside the chimney, and a picture had to be taken down.  Down stairs the dining-room sofa, standing across a window, got a little lake in the middle of it before we knew.  The side door blew open with a bang, and hats, coats, and shawls went scurrying from their pegs, through sitting-room and hall, like a flight of scared, living things.  We were like a little garrison in a great fort, besieged at all points at once.  We had to bolt doors,—­latches were nothing,—­and bar shutters.  And when we could pause indoors, what a froth and whirl we had to gaze out at!

The grass, all along the fields, was white, prostrate; swept fiercely one way; every blade stretched out helpless upon its green face.  The little pear-trees, heavy with fruit, lay prone in literal “windrows.”  The great ashes and walnuts twisted and writhed, and had their branches stripped upward of their leaves, as a child might draw a head of blossoming grass between his thumb and finger.  The beautiful elms were in a wild agony; their graceful little bough-tips were all snapped off and whirled away upon the blast, leaving them in a ragged blight.  A great silver poplar went over by the fence, carrying the posts and palings with it, and upturned a huge mass of roots and earth, that had silently cemented itself for half a century beneath the sward.  Up and down, between Grandfather Holabird’s home-field and ours, fallen locusts and wild cherry-trees made an abatis.  Over and through all swept the smiting, powdery, seething storm of waters; the air was like a sea, tossing and foaming; we could only see through it by snatches, to cry out that this and that had happened.  Down below us, the roof was lifted from a barn, and crumpled up in a heap half a furlong off, against some rocks; and the hay was flying in great locks through the air.

It began to grow dark.  We put a bright, steady light in the brown room, to shine through the south window, and show father that we were all right; directly after a lamp was set in Grandfather Holabird’s north porch.  This little telegraphy was all we could manage; we were as far apart as if the Atlantic were between us.

“Will they be frightened about you at home?” asked Ruth of Leslie.

“I think not.  They will know we should go in somewhere, and that there would be no way of getting out again.  People must be caught everywhere, just as it happens, to-night.”

“It’s just the jolliest turn-up!” cried Stephen, who had been in an ecstasy all the time.  “Let’s make molasses-candy, and sit up all night!”