AN ACCIDENT

Occasionally in their close intercourse, Tom had a curious feeling that he had seen Whalen a long while before, and he came to believe that he had seen him in France. That seemed likely enough, for they had both been in the fighting near Epernay and also at Chalons.

It was at odd times that Tom noticed this familiar look in Ned’s face. Ordinarily he did not notice it. Once when his companion was lifting a heavy stone that familiar look struck him forcibly. He even spoke of it, and Whalen too thought it quite likely that Tom had seen him.

On the day following their chat in the rustic arbor something happened which gave a dramatic turn to these thoughts of Tom’s. The incident was foreshadowed by thunderstorms during the night which shook and wrenched the cottage so that Tom in bed could actually feel the building lurch and jump in the slack of the safety cables, like a boat straining at its anchor rope. He realized then the wisdom of having the cables a little slack, for in such wind a sudden strain on a taut cable would wrench loose part of the structure.

In those recurrent frenzies of the elements the cottage seemed to jump and pull like some savage thing against its metal leashes. And the creaking of the rusted terminals made a clamorous medley. It was no wonder that Miranda thought the neighborhood was haunted.

All through the next day these recurrent storms continued. And in the intervals of unbridled fury a steady drizzle descended out of a leaden sky. The only bright spot in all the landscape was Mr. Royce Fairgreaves, resolutely faithful to his task of picking stones, armed with an umbrella. Most of the others lolled on the back porch of the hotel. Ferris sat in the cottage making up his accounts. Audry was engrossed in a book.

In a prolonged interval between showers, Tom and Whalen went into the woods to see how the roof of their little forest rest was withstanding the onslaughts of the weather. The tiny pavilion looked isolated and cosy in the dim woods. The saturated chips and shavings that still littered the spot imparted that pungent fragrance which comes from fresh wet wood. The ground was soggy, the thatched roof dripping, and the little brook running in a torrent.

The necessity of some supplementary work on the little bridge was apparent, for the water was pouring down one of the low banks and undermining the land on which the logs rested. The ends of the logs were resting in mud and settling down rapidly.

“They ought to be longer,” Whalen said.

“What do you say we fell that tree we started on and lay the trunk crossways underneath here?” Tom asked.

“Ought to do,” said Ned. “It’s going to pour again, though, in about ten minutes.”

“Let it come,” said Tom cheerily; “I’ll scoot for shelter when it does.”

Taking an axe that lay in one of the enclosed seats, Tom started for a tree a couple of hundred feet distant which had already been partially chopped for felling. Whalen sat in the pavilion watching him. Tom soon became so engrossed in his vigorous labor that he was not aware of the suddenly increasing volume of rain and the distant rumbling which heralded another spasm of the fickle weather.

“Would you like an umbrella?” Whalen called in allusion to Fairgreaves.

“Not yet,” laughed Tom.

“Better come in.”

“I can’t stop now,” Tom called, cheerily. “Let her come.”

The low, distant rumbling continued, a dazzling streak of lightning lit the sky, the woods were bright for a moment, and as the sudden light subsided through a series of lesser flashes, the dark leaves on all the trees were standing upright and fluttering madly in the heightening gale.

In another minute the storm was upon them, rending the air with its thunderous clamor, brightening the troubled woods with its appalling, momentary light. Peal after peal of thunder shook the earth.

The whole woods were agitated by the rising wind. Twigs and leaves flew wild, and a great branch nearby crashed in a tree and hung limp among the swaying branches. Split and torn, with its long, fibrous area of white showing, it looked like a suffering, stricken thing.

What happened, happened quickly. Tom’s cheery bravado could not persist long in such a frenzy of the elements, and pushing back his streaming hair from his face he laughingly surrendered to the storm and called that he had had enough. Whalen could not hear him, his voice was belittled and lost in the uproar.

He was just starting to run when there came a quick, deafening report followed by a tremor beneath him as if he were in a rocking boat. And then a prolonged, sharp peal, and a flash that blinded him. The whole of creation seemed to shake. He had a curious conviction that a chipmunk was running up his arm, and half-consciously he tried to catch it.

He was in the borderland of consciousness, vaguely aware of movement nearby. And he had an appalling sensation of sinking. The earth seemed to be falling away under him. In that brief movement of lapsing consciousness he thought he was in the ocean and that some frightful creature of the deep had caught his foot. Instinctively he wrenched and tugged but all in vain.

Then his senses returned and he was tingling all over. But he knew that he was not at sea for there was the odor of burning wood and of soaked foliage, and fresh wet earth. He could not see but he knew that he was on land.

Yet still something did hold his foot—held it fast. Held it as the jaws of a tiger hold. He tugged and pulled and became panic-stricken. But the merciless jaws held fast. He was lying in a very welter of oozy mud. He wriggled, squirmed, but only an excruciating pain in his ankle followed these frantic efforts.

“Where am I?” he called. “What—”

And then again his wounded hearing was stricken by a tearing, rending tumult very close by and he seemed to be tossed at the mercy of some terrible upheaval. And still those unseen jaws closed tighter on his foot and held it as the relentless jaws of a tiger hold....