“Cloud-burst!” announced Mrs. Yellett.

“Cloud-burst, all right enough,” agreed Leander, and he turned up his coat-collar in simple preparation for the deluge.

There flashed into Mary Carmichael’s mind a sentence from her physical geography that she had been obliged to commit to heart in her school-days:  “A cloud-burst is a sudden, capricious rainfall, as if the whole cloud had been precipitated at once.”  She wanted to question her companions as to the accuracy of this definition, but before she had time to frame a sentence the real cloud-burst came, with a splitting crack of thunder; then the lightning flashed out its message in the short-hand of the storm, across the inky blackness, and the water fell as if the ocean had been inverted.  In the fraction of a second all three were drenched to the skin, the water pouring from them in sheets, as if they had been some slight obstruction in the path of a waterfall.  The wagon was soon in a deep gully, with frothing, foaming, yellow water up to the hubs of the wheels.  Mrs. Yellett, like some goddess of the storm, lashed her horses forward to keep them from foundering in the mud, and the wagon creaked and groaned in all its timbers as it lurched and jolted through the angry torrents.

Each moment Mary expected to be flung from the barrels, and clung till her finger-tips were white and aching.  From the drenched red bedquilts a sticky crimson trail ran over the barrel heads, as well as over Mary’s hands, face, and dress.  Still they forged on through the deluge, Mrs. Yellett shouting and lashing the horses, holding them erect and safe with the skill she never lost.  The fur on her rabbit-skin cap was beaten flat.  The great, wet braids had fallen from the force of the water and hung straight and black, like huge snakes uncoiled.  She was far from losing her grip on either the horses or the situation, and from the inspiring ring of her voice as she urged them forward it was plain that she took a fierce joy in this conflict of the elements.

It was bitterly cold, and Mary reflected that if Leander’s teeth chattered half as hard as hers did, without breaking, they must, indeed, be of excellent quality.  The storm began to abate, and the sky became lighter, though the water still poured in torrents.  As soon as her responsibility as driver left her time to speak, Mrs. Yellett lost no time in fastening the cloud-burst to Leander.

“This here is what comes of settin’ up your back against God A’mighty and encouragin’ the heathen and the infidel in his idolatry.  I might ‘a’ knowed somethin’ would happen, takin’ you along!  ’And the heathen and the infidel went out, and the Lord God sent a cloud-burst to wet him,’” quoted Mrs. Yellett from the apocryphal Scriptures that never yet failed to furnish her with verse and text.

The infidel, from his side of the wagon, began to display agitation.  His jaws worked, but he said nothing.

“You ’ain’t lost them teeth again, have you?”