The Mighty Atom [antikvár]

THE MIGHTY ATOM CHAPTER I A HEAVY storm had raged all day on the north coast of Devon. Summer had worn the garb of winter in a freakish fit of mockery and masquerade ; and even among the sheltered orchards of the deeply-embowered valley of Combmartin, many a tough and gnarled branch of many a sturdy apple-tree laden with reddening fruit, had been beaten to the ground by the fury of the blast and the sweeping gusts of rain. Only now, towards late afternoon, were the sullen skies beginning to clear. The sea still lashed the rocks with angry thuds of passion, but the strength of the wind was gradually sinking into a mere breeze, and a warm saffron light in the west showed where the sun, obscured for so many hours, was about to hide his glowing face altogether for the night behind the black vizor of our upward-moving earth. The hush of the gloaming began to permeate nature ; flowers, draggled with rain, essayed to lift their delicate stems from the mould where they had been bowed prone and almost broken,—and . a httle brown bird fluttering joyously out of a bush where it had taken shelter from the tempest, alighted on a window-sill of one of the nearest human habitations it could perceive, and