Yet strangely they all went back into the house vaguely quieted.  Rachael presently said that no matter what was going to happen, she was too cold and tired to stay up any longer, and went upstairs to bed.  Miss Stokes and Miss McKim settled themselves in their chairs; Emily Barwick went to sleep with her head against her husband’s thin young shoulder.  Somebody suggested coffee, and there was a general move toward the kitchen.

Rachael, a little bewildered, woke in heavenly sunlight in exactly the position she had taken when she crept into bed the night before.  For a few minutes she lay staring at the bright old homely room, and at the clock ticking briskly toward nine.

“Dear Lord, what a thing sunshine is?” she said then slowly.  No need to ask of the storm with this celestial reassurance flooding the room.  But after a few moments she got up and went to the window.  The trees, battered and torn, were ruffling such leaves as were left them gallantly in the wind, the paths still ran yellow water, the roadway was a muddy waste, eaves were still gurgling, and everywhere was the drip and splash of water.  But the sky was clear and blue, and the air as soft as milk.

As eager as a child Rachael dressed and ran downstairs, and was out in the new world.  The fresh wind whipped a glorious color into her face; the whole of sea and sky and earth seemed to be singing.

Trees were down, fences were down, autumn gardens were all a wreck; and the ocean, when she came to the shore, was still rolling wild and high.  But it was blue now, and the pure sky above it was blue, and there was utter protection and peace in the sunny air.  Landmarks all along the shore were washed away, and beyond the first line of dunes were pools left by the great tide, scummy and sinking fast into the sand, to leave only a fringe of bubbles behind.  Minor wreckages of all sorts lay scattered all along the beach:  poles and ropes, boxes and barrels.

Rachael walked on and on, breathing deep, swept out of herself by the fresh glory of the singing morning.  Presently she would go back, and there would be Warren’s letter, or his telegram, or perhaps himself, and then their golden days would begin—­their happy time!  But even Warren to-day could not intrude upon her mood of utter gratitude and joy in just living—­just being young and alive in a world that could hold such a sea and such a sky.

A full mile from the village, along the ocean shore, a stream came down from under a cliff, a stream, as Rachael and investigating children had often proved to their own satisfaction, that rose in a small but eminently satisfactory cave.  The storm had washed several great smooth logs of driftwood into the cave, and beyond them to-day there was such a gurgling and churning going on that Rachael, eager not to miss any effect of the storm, stepped cautiously inside.

The augmented little river was three times its usual size, and was further made unmanageable by the impeding logs swept in by the high tide.  Straw and weeds and rubbish of every description choked its course, and little foaming currents and backwaters almost filled the cave with their bubbling and swirling.