The wind was swaying him about in its fitful gusts, and he rather liked it.  In his anguish of spirit it was a pleasure to contend with the storm.  The wind, the lightning, the sudden sharp claps of thunder were on his own key.  He felt in the temper of old Lear.  The winds might blow and crack their cheeks.

But it was not alone the suggestions of Andrew that aroused his suspicions.  He now recalled a strange statement that Samuel Anderson made in discharging him.  “You said what you had no right to say about my wife, in talking to Julia.”  What had he said?  Only that some woman had not treated Andrew “just right.”  Who the woman might be he had not known until his present interview with Andrew.  Had Julia been making mischief herself by repeating his words and giving them a direction he had not intended?  He could not have dreamed of her acting such a part but for the strange influence of Andrew’s strange story.  And so he staggered on, wet to the skin, defying in his heart the lightning and the wind, until he came to the cabin of his father.  Climbing the fence, for there was no gate, he pulled the latch-string and entered.  They were all asleep; the hard-working family went to bed early.  But chubby-faced Wilhelmina, the favorite sister, had set up to wait for August, and he now found her fast asleep in the chair.

“Wilhelmina! wake up!” he said.

“O August!” she said, opening the corner of one eye and yawning, “I wasn’t asleep.  I only—­uh—­shut my eyes a minute.  How wet you are!  Did you go to see the pretty girl up at Mr. Anderson’s?”

“No,” said August.

“O August! she is pretty, and she is good and sweet,” and Wilhelmina took his wet checks between her chubby hands and gave him a sleepy kiss, and then crept off to bed.

And, somehow, the faith of the child Wilhelmina counteracted the skepticism of the and Andrew, and August felt the storm subsiding.

When he looked out of the window of the loft in which he slept the shower had ceased as suddenly as it had come, the thunder had retreated behind the hills, the clouds were already breaking, and the white face of the moon was peering through the ragged rifts.

CHAPTER VIII.

FIGGERS WON’T LIE

“Figgers won’t lie,” said Elder Hankins, the Millerite preacher.  “I say figgers won’t lie.  When a Methodis’ talks about fallin’ from grace he has to argy the pint.  And argyments can’t be depended ’pon.  And when a Prisbyterian talks about parseverance he haint got the absolute sartainty on his side.  But figgers won’t lie noways, and it’s figgers that shows this yer to be the last yer of the world, and that the final eend of all things is approachin’.  I don’t ask you to listen to no ‘mpressions of me own, to no reasonin’ of nobody; all I ask is that you should listen to the voice of the man in the linen-coat what spoke to Dan’el, and then listen to the voice of the ’rithmetic, and to a sum in simple addition, the simplest sort of addition.”