"At the next flash--the fence
beyond the meadow----"
"What was it? What was it like?" The lightning flashed incessantly. Helen
tried to point; her hand only jerked from side to side.
"_Look_!" she cried.
"I see nothing but the lightning," Minnie answered, breathlessly.
"Oh, the _fence_! The fence--and in the field!"
"_Helen_! What was it _like_?"
"Ah-ah!" she panted, "a long line of white--horrible white----"
"What _like_?" Minnie turned from the window and caught the other's wrist
in a fluttering clasp.
"Minnie, Minnie! Like long white gowns and cowls crossing the fence."
Helen released her wrist, and put both hands on Minnie's cheeks, forcing
her around to face the pane. "You must look--you must look," she cried.
"They wouldn't do it, they wouldn't--it _isn't_!" Minnie cried. "They
couldn't come in the storm. They wouldn't do it in the pouring rain!"
"Yes! Such things would mind the rain!" She burst into hysterical
laughter, and Minnie, almost as unnerved, caught her about the waist.
"They would mind the rain. They would fear a storm! Ha, ha, ha! Yes--yes!
And I let him go--I let him go!"
Pressing close together, shuddering, clasping each other's waists, the two
girls peered out at the flickering landscape.
"_Look_!"
Up from the distant fence that bordered the northern side of Jones's
field, a pale, pelted, flapping thing reared itself, poised, and seemed,
just as the blackness came again, to drop to the ground.
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