CHAPTER VI.
TWO DYING BEQUESTS.
This midsummer night was sultry and still.

The darkness was like the darkness of Egypt, lighted every now and then by a vivid Hash of lightning, from what quarter of the heavens no man knew.

The inky sky was invisible--no breath of air stirred the terrible calm.

The midsummer night was full of dark and deadly menace.
Hours ago a fierce and wrathful sunset had burned itself out on a brassy sky.

The sun, a lurid ball of fire, had sunk in billows of blood-red cloud, and pitch blackness had fallen upon earth and sky and sea.