"
They stood in a tunnel which passed under the road, affording
immediate communication between the park and the shore. The further
end of it was dark with trees. The upper half of the door by which
they had entered was a wooden grating, for the admission of light,
and through it they were now gazing, though they could see little
but the straight lines of almost perpendicular rain that scratched
out the colours of the landscape. The sea was troubled, although no
wind blew; it heaved as with an inward unrest. But suddenly there
was a great broken sound somewhere in the air; and the next moment
a storm came tearing over the face of the sea, covering it with
blackness innumerably rent into spots of white. Presently it struck
the shore, and a great rude blast came roaring through the grating,
carrying with it a sheet of rain, and, catching Florimel's hair,
sent it streaming wildly out behind her.
"Dinna ye think, my leddy," said Malcolm, "ye had better mak for the
hoose? What wi' the win' an' the weet thegither, ye'll be gettin'
yer deith o' cauld. I s' gang wi' ye sae far, gien ye'll alloo me,
jist to baud it ohn blawn ye awa'."
The wind suddenly fell, and his last words echoed loud in the
vaulted sky. For a moment it grew darker in the silence, and then
a great flash carried the world away with it, and left nothing but
blackness behind. A roar of thunder followed, and even while it yet
bellowed, a white face flitted athwart the grating, and a voice of
agony shrieked aloud:
"I dinna ken whaur it comes frae!"
Florimel grasped Malcolm's arm: the face had passed close to hers
--only the grating between, and the cry cut through the thunder
like a knife.
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