How I managed to draw myself
up to that slippery sill all reeking now with rain, or save myself
from falling to my death in the whirling blast that carried
everything about me into the ravine below, I do not know.
I simply did it and escaped all--lightning-flash and falling limb,
and the lasso of swirling winds--to find myself at last lying my
full length along the bridge amid a shock of elements such as
nature seldom sports with. Here I clung, for I was breathless,
waiting with head buried in my arm for the rain to abate before I
attempted a further escape from the place which held such horror
for me!
But no abatement came, and feeling the bridge shaking under me
almost to cracking, I began to crawl, inch by inch, along its
gaping boards till I reached its middle.
There God stopped me.
For, with a clangour as of rending worlds, a bolt, hot from the
zenith, sped down upon the bluff behind me, throwing me down again
upon my face and engulfing sense and understanding for one wild
moment. Then I sprang upright and with a yell of terror sped
across the rocking boards beneath me to the road, no longer
battling with my desire to look back; no longer asking myself when
and how that dead man would be found; no longer even asking my own
duty in the case; for Spencer's Folly was on fire and the crime I
had just seen perpetrated there would soon be a crime stricken
from the sight of men forever.
In the flare of its tremendous burning I found my way up through
the forest road to my home and into my father's presence.
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