Low growled the wind, as he ran around his
broken forces, gathering again new forces in greater and greater
multitudes.
Just then, with an oath, the figure rose and faced the storm, striding
again up the slope, as if determined to carry the war into the camp of
the enemy.
A low growl came rumbling from the hills, as the wind god rushed along,
encouraging his legions, threatening, coaxing, pleading, commanding
them to fight, and so to overcome this figure who now boldly faced his
great army.
The advance guard of the storm broke upon him in wild desperation,
rushing and thundering, howling and yelling, sputtering and hissing,
spitting and hitting at him, and then the main body struck him full in
the face, all the bulk and the force of it hurled upon him with terrible
impetuous abandon, and Robert's foot striking a tuft at the moment, he
went down, down into a bog-pool among the slush and moss, and decaying
heather-roots, down before the mad rush of the wind-god's army, who
roared and shouted in glee, with a voice that shook the hills and called
upon the elements to laugh and rejoice.
And the widowed partridge out upon the moor, creeping closer to the lee
side of his tuft of moss, cried out in his pain, not because of the fury
of the blast, but because of the heart that was breaking under the
little shivering body for the dead mate, who had meant so much of life
and happiness to him--cried with an ache in every cry, and the heart of
the man responded in his great, overpowering grief.
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