They listened to the irregular surge of the rain on the shingles. The wind seemed to be picking up again. The chinaberry crackled ominously in its old brittle limbs. The boughs flailed the roof. The storm enclosed them, boxed them in together. It was inconceivable that they had ever been afraid, that they had ever been separate.

“My name be Martin,” he said. “I be called mostly Mart.”

“Mart,” she repeated.

“You want to go off with me?” he asked.

She was not startled. She had sensed its coming, as she had sensed the coming of the gale. It was strangely a part of the storm. It was part of the inevitable change.

“I reckon.”

“Git your things. Le’s go.”

She made a bundle of her belongings.

“What about your daddy?”

“I reckon we’d best jest ease out. He mought raise up a turrible fuss iffen he knowed I was goin’.”

“Kin you write out a letter to leave for him?” he asked.

“No. I cain’t write ary word.”

“Nor me,” he said.

“I got my name writ out,” she suggested eagerly. “That Yankee at the sawmill done printed it for me on a white paper.”

“I got no use for a Yankee,” he said dubiously. “Reckon it’s writ wrong, or means somethin’ else?”

“I don’t think. The range rider kin read, and he said it done spelled ‘Florry.’ If I leave it where Pappy kin find it, he’ll know it means I done went.”

She withdrew the slip from her bundle and smoothed it out on the kitchen table, weighting a corner with the coffee-pot. Mart nodded approvingly. On the step he hesitated.

“Hit don’t seem right, takin’ you off in sich a wind and rain.”

“Hit’ll mebbe fair off tomorrer. Hit don’t mean nothin’ to me, gittin’ wetted. We got to git in the clare whilst Pappy’s likkered.”

“That’s right. We got to git in the clare.”

As he turned to replace the door behind them she darted back and set a pan of rain water on the floor for the hound.

“A thirsty animal be so pitiful,” she explained.

The second circle of the hurricane was on them as they fought their way through the piney-woods, riotous with the hissing of pine boughs. The northwest section of the State was only getting the fringe of the great upheaval.

“On the east coast,” Mart cried in her ear, “they tell the palmeeters gits flatted smack to the ground, times, like, and over in the scrub they says the trees’ll done be bended.”

They stopped for breath under the comparative shelter of an overhanging live oak.

“There wa’n’t much there,” Florry told him, “but I be ashamed, I plumb forgot to git you some rations.”

“Don’t let it worry you none,” he assured her. “I don’t eat regular. You got you a long whiles to git me rations in.”

His lean brown face was bright with his smile. He grew serious.

“I figgered on gittin’ over to Levy County and gittin’ us a parson there, mebbe tonight.”