Still Gibbie did not come.

Before the day was over, she had had a good lesson in praying.

For here she was, one who had never yet acted on her own responsibility, alone on a bare mountain-side, in the heart of a storm which seemed as if it would never cease, and not a creature knew where she was but the dumb boy, and he had left her! If he should never come back, what would become of her?
She could not find her way down the mountain; and if she could, where was she to go, with all Daurside under water?
She would soon have eaten up all the food in the cottage, and the storm might go on for ever, who could tell?
Or who could tell whether, when it was over, and she got down to the valley below, she should not find it a lifeless desert, everybody drowned, and herself the only person left alive in the world?
Then the noises were terrible.

She seemed to inhabit noise.
Through the general roar of wind and water and rain every now then came a sharper sound, like a report or crack, followed by a strange low thunder, as it seemed.

They were the noises of stones carried down by the streams, grinding against each other, and dashed stone against stone; and of rocks falling and rolling, and bounding against their fast-rooted neighbours.