But, as the fiercest gusts
came, he kept muttering:--
"I knew what it meant--mild winter on the Cape! There's the devil in the
old Cape weather, teacher, and he never skipped four seasons yit! If it
ain't one time, it must be another. Yis, yis! mild winter on the Cape,
and no March to speak on, and a hurricane in summer! Wall, we're both on
us right, ma, and we're both on us wrong. It ain't neither wind ner rain,
but the heavens let loose, and God A'mighty's own power a blowin' of it.
Yis, yis! I had my misgivin's all along; thinks I, better a little more
weather now, than to blast every livin' thing by and by; but I hadn't no
idee o' this! The Lord ha' mercy! The Lord ha' mercy!"
For all that one could see through the windows was a great black sheet of
driving rain, and the roar of the storm was terrible. The Ark shook. It
seemed, at each successive blast, as though the walls would fall in over
our heads. One could easily imagine the whole crazy structure borne
onward before the resistless tempest, to take a final wild leap from the
cliffs.
"Wallencamp's a gittin' all mixed up," said Grandpa, without the faintest
tinge of humor, now.
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