Drenched with rain and tired of fighting against the boisterous wind which almost tore his breath away, he entered this dark wood with a vague sense of relief,--it offered some sort of shelter, and if the trees attracted the lightning and he were struck dead beneath them, what did it matter after all! One way of dying was as good (or as bad) as another! The over-arching boughs dripping with wet, closed over him and drew him, as it were, into their dense shadows,--the wind shrieked after him like a scolding fury, but its raging tone grew softer as he penetrated more deeply into the sable-green depths of heavily foliaged solitude.

His weary feet trod gratefully on a thick carpet of pine needles and masses of the last year's fallen leaves,--and a strong sweet scent of mingled elderflower and sweetbriar was tossed to him on every gust of rain.

Here the storm turned itself to music and revelled in a glorious symphony of sound.
"Oh ye Winds of God, bless ye the Lord; praise Him and magnify Him for ever! "Oh ye Lightnings and Clouds, bless ye the Lord; praise Him and magnify Him for ever!" In full chords of passionate praise the hurricane swept its grand anthem through the rustling, swaying trees, as though these were the strings of a giant harp on which some great Archangel played,--and the dash and roar of the sea came with it, rolling in the track of another mighty peal of thunder.

Helmsley stopped and listened, seized by an overpowering enchantment and awe.
"This--this is Life!" he said, half aloud--"Our miserable human vanities--our petty schemes--our poor ambitions--what are they?
Motes in a sunbeam!--gone as soon as realised! But Life,--the deep, self-contained divine Life of Nature--this is the only life that lives for ever, the Immortality of which we are a part!" A fierce gust of wind here snapped asunder a great branch from a tree, and flung it straight across his path.

Had he been a few inches nearer, it would have probably struck him down with it.