The wind shifted yet a point
or two and blew stronger. In ten minutes every wind
of heaven seemed to be roaming at large. Some of the
thatching on the wheat-stacks was now whirled fantas-
tically aloft, and had to be replaced and weighted with
some rails that lay near at hand. This done, Oak slaved
away again at the barley. A huge drop of rain smote
his face, the wind snarled round every corner, the trees
rocked to the bases of their trunks, and the twigs clashed
in strife. Driving in spars at any point and on any
system, inch by inch he covered more and more safely
from ruin this distracting impersonation of seven hundred
pounds. "The rain came on in earnest, and Oak soon felt
the water to be tracking cold and clammy routes down
his back. Ultimately he was reduced well-nigh to a
homogeneous sop, and the dyes of his clothes trickled
down and stood in a pool at the foot of the ladder.
The rain stretched obliquely through the dull atmo-
sphere in liquid spines, unbroken in continuity between
their beginnings in the clouds and their points in him.
Oak suddenly remembered that eight months before
this time he had been fighting against fire in the same
spot as desperately as he was fighting against water
now -- and for a futile love of the same woman.
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