glory and
radiance behind them, a radiance which human eye would not look upon.
Then close on the flashes came the crackling and booming thunder again,
only more distant now.

"I hope the Vivians are not nervous," he murmured. "I am afraid King's
Abbot is having it even more severely than Moor End."

Moor End stood at the edge of the extreme end of King's Moor.
Abbot's Field, the larger village, lay two or three miles further along
the edge, while behind both the great moor rolled away and away to the
south, desolate, barren, until it reached the sea and the little villages
scattered along the coast.

Mr. Carlyle turned and looked at the rolling stretches of grey-green land
all round him. Besides himself, and that one tiny dwelling, there was not
a sign of human life to be seen. Overhead the storm still threatened and
grumbled; below, the man and the house stood powerless, but undaunted.
Far away to the south the sun shone out brightly through a rift in the
clouds. "Always God's promise somewhere. God's sign to us that He
cares."

Suddenly, out of the inky murkiness to the west a horse came galloping
swiftly. In such a scene of desolate solitude, the sight of any living
creature came as a surprise, and held one's gaze. Mr. Carlyle watched the
creature fascinatedly. "Frightened, I suppose, poor beast," he muttered
sympathetically. "Whomever it belongs to should have taken it in; they
must have seen the storm coming. Oh!" his words broke off suddenly, for,
as the horse drew near, he could see that it had on a bridle and a
saddle--a lady's saddle too!

"It must have thrown its rider," he cried anxiously, and pondered
helplessly what he could do. How was he to catch the frightened creature
without frightening it more, and where, in all that expanse, was he to
begin to look for the fallen rider? Then suddenly it came to him that
there was something familiar about the horse.

"Peter!" he called, "Peter! Peter! Peter!" He tried to imitate the note
and voice Peter's master had used on the day of the picnic. "Peter, good
boy, come here." The horse's ears twitched. He had heard him, and his
pace slackened. He was really a friendly, tame creature, but a specially
violent clap of thunder, followed by a flash of lightning which had shot
across his eyes, had, for the moment, given him such a shock that he had
lost his usually sober senses, and flown panic-stricken from the
neighbourhood of such horrors. He w