Small cataracts tore in desperate haste
down the slope of the garden-paths, laying bare in their pigmy fury the
lower strata of rough gravel and pebbles. Upon the roof of the balcony
was maintained an evenly sonorous monotone of drubbing, as if
innumerable fairy carpenters were nailing on the shingles. The invalid
water-spout had a hard time of it; it was racked, shaken, and bullied,
and continually choked itself with the volubility of its fluent
utterances, which were instantly swallowed up in the bottomless depths
of the waste-barrel. A strong, cool, earthy odor rose from the garden,
and was wafted past the professor's nostrils, and into the heated house.
The moist brown flower-beds exhaled a fragrant thankfulness, and the
grass-blades looked twice as green and twice as tall as before.
Meanwhile the heavy, regular pulse of the thunder had been beating
intermittently overhead, and bounding ponderously from hill-side to
hill-side; and ever and anon the lightning had showed startlingly in
dazzling zigzags through the omnipresent shadow. But now it seemed that
there was a little less weight in the fall, and gloom in the air. The
pervading freshness of the breeze made itself more unmistakably
perceptible. The west began to lighten, and the rain and darkness
drifted to the east.
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