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None hindered my movements, so, liking little the smell of wet, uncleanly garments which clung around the fire, I made my bed in a heather bush in the lee of a boulder, and from utter weariness fell presently asleep. The storm died away in the night, and I awoke to a clear, rain-washed world and the chill of an autumn morn.

The dreary emptiness of the rain-washed yard afforded them more than ample confirmation. "Where is your pig of an ostler, Mother Capoulade?" demanded the angry Captain. Quivering with terror, she answered him that the rascal should be in the shed by the stables, where it was his wont to sleep.

Somewhere, about halfway over the plain, he became convinced that his right leg from the hip down was gone to sleep. He had an idea that he was not keeping up. A line passed him another; he mustn't let the others get ahead! and for a minute he ran quite rapidly. There was a yellow, rain-washed gulley before him; the charge swept down one side and up the other.

No sooner did the two women stand in the light and warmth of the kitchen-hearth, than the elder fell on the neck of the younger, and kissed the cold, rain-washed face of her child, with a love grown fierce by years of hopeless hope and unrequited longing.

But it broke only to reform, and no sooner had the thunder ceased, the rain intermitted, and the sun again come forth, than one received the vague impression of the swift rebuilding of the vast, invisible column that smothered the city under its bases, towering higher and higher into the rain-washed, crystal-clear atmosphere.

Then I would glance at her again, and then at the last purple rays of the setting sun where they were throwing the dense clusters of old, rain-washed birches into brilliant relief. Yet again my eyes would return to Varenika, and, each time that they did so, it struck me afresh that she was not nearly so plain as at first I had thought her. "How I wish that I wasn't in love already!"

To the north stretched the shores of the back of the Cape. High clay bluffs, rain-washed and wrinkled, sloping sharply to the white sand of the beach a hundred feet below.

"And, sure enough, he then and there composed the piece about 'the wondrous Valentina. What a tender thing it is, and how full of understanding! My God, my God!" And, with a thoughtful shake of his bead, Kalinin raised his boyish eyes towards the blue patches in the rain-washed sky.

With a mighty effort he broke his bonds and threw out his arms in an attempt to fight off his tormentor. The morning sun was warm across his pillow, making him blink. On his chest stood Satan, kneading the bedclothes with his front paws and purring gently. From the open window came a fresh, rain-washed breeze.

At the bottom of the softness there was the iron of resolution. 'No, no; not now, he said involuntarily: and she never forgot the painful struggle of the face; 'good-bye. He touched her hand without another word, and was gone. She toiled up to the gate with difficulty, the gray rain-washed road, the wall, the trees, swimming before her eyes.