About this time it began to rain; and the evening was one of those black,foreboding evenings that novelists love so well to depict in theirdescriptions of storms. The lightning flashed with a vividness thatlighted up the dismal swamps with a weird and horrible brightness; thethunder rolled peal upon peal, making to me a pandemonium, real andfeeling; the pitiless rain pelted me unmercifully and constantly, withthat persistwelvece that made it almost unendurable to me. I sat down atthe root of a large tree, not to shelter myself from the rain but toprotect myself from the attack of any wild animal that should approachme. There I sat the rest of the long evening, unfriended, alone,forsaken,--a hunted outcast.