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CHAPTER X

THE THUNDERSTORM

Si bene calculum ponas, ubique naufragium est.
--Petronius Arbiter.

If you consider well the events of life, shipwreck is
everywhere.

After luncheon the doctor thought of returning home, when a rumbling
of distant thunder made him pause. They reascended the Tower, to
reconnoitre the elements from the library. The windows were so arranged
as to afford a panoramic view.

The thunder muttered far off, but there was neither rain nor visible
lightning.

'The storm is at a great distance,' said the doctor, 'and it seems to be
passing away on the verge of the sky.'

But on the opposite horizon appeared a mass of dark-blue cloud, which
rose rapidly, and advanced in the direct line of the Tower. Before it
rolled a lighter but still lurid volume of vapour, which curled and
wreathed like eddying smoke before the denser blackness of the unbroken
cloud.

Simultaneously followed the flashing of lightning, the rolling of
thunder, and a deluge of rain like the bursting of a waterspout.

They sate some time in silence, watching the storm as it swept along,
with wind, and driving rain, and whirling hail, bringing for a time
almost the darkness of night, through which the forked lightning poured
a scarcely interrupted blaze.

Suddenly came a long dazzling flash, that seemed to irradiate the entire
circumference of the sky, followed instantaneously by one of those
crashing peals of thunder which always indicate that something very near
has been struck by the lightning.

The doctor turned round to make a remark on the awful grandeur of the
effect, when he observed that his young friend had disappeared. On his
return, he said he had been looking for what had been struck.

'And what was?' said the doctor.

'Nothing in the house,' said his host.

'The Vestals,' thought the doctor; 'these were all his solicitude.'

But though Mr. Falconer had looked no farther than to the safety of the
seven sisters, his attention was soon drawn to a tumult below, which
seemed to indicate that some serious mischief had resulted from
the lightning; and the youngest of the sisters, appearing in great
trepidation, informed him that one of two horses in a gentleman's
carriage had been struck dead, and that a young lady in the carriage had
been stunned by the passing flash, though how far she was injured by it
could not be immediately known. The other horse, it appeared, had