Crash! Crash! It is the cottonwood trees falling to earth. Shriek!

Shriek! Shriek! It is the Demon racing along the plain and uprooting

even the blades of grass. Shock! Shock! Shock! It is the Fury

flinging his fiery bolts into the bosom of the earth.--

"The Demon and the Fury." M. Quad.

Away up the gorge all diurnal fancies trooped into the wide liberties of

endless luminous vistas of azure sunlit mountains beneath the shining

azure heavens. The sky, looking down in deep blue placidities, only here

and there smote the water to azure emulations of its tint.--

"In the Stranger's Country." Charles Egbert Craddock.

There was every indication of a dust-storm, though the sun still shone

brilliantly. The hot wind had become wild and rampant. It was whipping

up the sandy coating of the plain in every direction. High in the air

were seen whirling spires and cones of sand--a curious effect against the

deep-blue sky. Below, puffs of sand were breaking out of the plain in

every direction, as though the plain were alive with invisible horsemen.

These sandy cloudlets were instantly dissipated by the wind; it was the

larger clouds that were lifted whole into the air, and the larger clouds

of sand were becoming more and more the rule.

Alfred's eye, quickly scanning the horizon, descried the roof of the

boundary-rider's hut still gleaming in the sunlight. He remembered the

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The American Claimant