that made the boys jump, and the outflung anger of lightning. Far over on an unseen face came the roar that was neither thunder nor wind nor the roll of balls down a skittle alley. The top of a big tree sliced the mist for an instant as it pitched forward. Then the mighty groan of the parted slip filled earth, and rang against the sky until it settled to silence far down in a gully-bottom.
“There’ll be jes’ the naked skull o’ that hill grinnin’ at us in the mornin’,” said Moody, startled to speech. Then he shivered in the soaked rags that clung to him. For it was quite possible that the Brothers might also stand up skull-bare, and grin over the death that lay hid at the bottom.
The shingle tread where four men worked was sloppy as the wash in a dredge-bucket; and the sheep stumbled on it, weighted with water, and crying against the unwearied menace of the dogs. And still the chain dragged forward, pulling all life with it; and still the rain pelted straightly, settling in behind the earth; loosening, loosening; and still the boys counted the ridges yet to be won before the easy slope of the Dome shoulder gave clean foothold of tussock and broom.
It was Tod who heard first from the tops where the wind blew the sound gustily. First the groan as of a calving iceberg; then the quick snarl of shingle, and the following roar
