The sunlight that flooded the door-stone and patched the cottage floor began to lessen and withdraw.  Low and distant there sounded a roll of thunder.  Jock Binning came upon his crutches from the bench by the stream where he made a fishing-net.

“A tempest’s daundering up!”

Elspeth rose.  “I must go home—­I must get home before it comes!”

“If ye’ll bide, lassie, it may go by.”

“No, I cannot.”  She had brought to Mother Binning a basket heaped with bloomy plums.  She took it up and set it on the table.  “I’ll get the basket when next I come.  Now I must go!  Hark, there’s the thunder again!”

Ian had risen also.  “I will go with you.  Yes!  It was my purpose to walk through to White Farm.  I sent Fatima around with Peter Lindsay.”

As they passed the ash-tree there was lightning, but yet the heavens showed great lakes of blue, and a broken sunlight lay upon the path.

“There’s time enough!  We need not go too fast.  The path is rough for that.”

They walked in silence, now side by side, now, where the way was narrow, one before the other.  The blue clouded over, there sprang a wind.  The trees bent and shook, the deep glen grew gray and dark.  That wind died and there was a breathless stillness, heated and heavy.  Each heard the other’s breathing as they walked.

“Let us go more quickly!  We have a long way.”

“Will you go back to Mother Binning’s?”

“That, too, is far.”

They had passed the cave a little way and were in mid-glen.  It was dusk in this narrow pass.  The trees hung, shadows in a brooding twilight; between the close-set pillars of the hills the sky showed slate-hued, with pallid feathers of cloud driven across.  Lightning tore it, the thunder was loud, the trees upon the hilltops began to move.  Some raindrops fell, large, slow, and warm.  The lightning ran again, blindingly bright; the ensuing thunderclap seemed to shake the rock.  As it died, the cataract sound of the wind was heard among the ranked trees.  The drops came faster, came fast.

“It’s no use!” cried Ian.  “You’ll be drenched and blinded!  There’s danger, too, in these tall trees.  Come back to the cave and take shelter!”

He turned.  She followed him, breathless, liking the storm—­so that no bolt struck him.  In every nerve, in every vein, she felt life rouse itself.  It was like day to old night, summer to one born in winter, a passion of revival where she had not known that there was anything to revive.  The past was as it were not, the future was as it were not; all things poured into a tremendous present.  It was proper that there should be storm without, if within was to be this enormous, aching, happy tumult that was pain indeed, but pain that one would not spare!

Ian parted the swinging briers.  They entered the cavern.  If it was dim outside in the glen, it was dimmer here.  Then the lightning flashed and all was lit.  It vanished, the light from the air in conflict with itself.  All was dark—­then the flash again!  The rain now fell in a torrent.