A heavy black cloud overhung the woods; an expectant stillness brooded upon the sultry world; an angry storm was in the air.  The first vivid flash and simultaneous peal burst from the sky as he reached the passage between the two rooms.

“Ye air powerful perlite ter come a-steppin’ home jes’ at supper-time,” said his mother advancing to meet him.  “Ye lef’ no wood hyar, an’ ye said ye would borry the mule, an’ come home early a-purpose to haul some.  An’ me hyar with nuthin’ to cook supper with but sech chips an’ blocks an’ bresh ez I could pick up off’n the groun’.”

Birt’s troubles had crowded out the recollection of this domestic duty.

“I clean furgot,” he admitted, penitently.  Then he asked suddenly, “An’ whar war Rufe, an’ Pete, an’ Joe, ez ye hed ter go ter pickin’ up of chips an’ sech off’n the groun’?”

He turned toward the group of small boys.  “Air you-uns all disabled somehows, ez ye can’t pick up chips an’ bresh an’ sech?” he said.  “An’ ef ye air, whyn’t ye go ter the tanyard arter me?”

“They war all off in the woods, a-lookin’ arter Rufe’s trap ez ye sot fur squir’ls,” Mrs. Dicey explained.  “It hed one in it, an’ I cooked it fur supper.”

Birt said that he could go out early with his axe and cut enough wood for breakfast tomorrow, and then he fell silent.  Once or twice his preoccupied demeanor called forth comment.

“Whyn’t ye eat some o’ the squir’l, Birt?” his mother asked at the supper table.  “Pears-like ter me ez it air cooked toler’ble tasty.”

Birt could not eat.  He soon rose from the table and resumed his chair by the window, and for half an hour no word passed between them.

The thunder seemed to roll on the very roof of the cabin, and it trembled beneath the heavy fall of the rain.  At short intervals a terrible blue light quivered through crevices in the “daubin’” between the logs of the wall, and about the rude shutter which closed the glassless window.  Now and then a crash from the forest told of a riven tree.  But the storm had no terrors for the inmates of this humble dwelling.  Pete and Joe had already gone to bed; Tennessee had fallen asleep while playing on the floor, and Rufe dozed peacefully in his chair.  Even Mrs. Dicey nodded as she knitted, the needles sometimes dropping from her nerveless hand.

Birt silently watched the group for a time in the red light of the smouldering fire and the blue flashes from without.  At length he softly rose and crept noiselessly to the door; the fastening was the primitive latch with a string attached; it opened without a sound in his cautious handling, and he found himself in the pitchy darkness outside, the wild mountain wind whirling about him, and the rain descending in steady torrents.

He had stumbled only a few steps from the house when he thought he indistinctly heard the door open again.  He dreaded his mother’s questions, but he stopped and looked back.