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Perhaps God was in this cloud coming up muttering towards her. Perhaps he was going to speak to her in the field with a voice of seven thunders. She remembered how he had gone before the children of Israel into the wilderness as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. This was very likely the pillar of cloud—and she could see the fire under it, its glowing night-side. She felt her skin crawl with terror as it came nearer. God was breathing all the air there was—He left none for her. She suffocated and screamed.

In answer to her cry a flock of starlings flew up out of the corn, but she forgot to sound her rattle. The air seemed full of evil wings. How she wished she was at home, in the crowded comfortable shelter of the Boot, able to hide her face under her mother's arm, even if her mother's other arm were lifted in chastisement over a runagate daughter. Never, never, she knew, must she leave the field where she was paid sixpence a week to sit and scare the birds in rain or shine, storm or calm. Her frock would soon dry on her, for it was her only garment. She had been wet through many times before. But she could not bear the thunder, and now the awful cloud was darkening all the sky, and a sudden wind rushed out from under it, more terrifying than the airless calm, screaming in the hedge and rustling in the corn like a thousand wings.