nd
Sight, open at the very page which had so bewitched him and vexed me. I
glanced at it mechanically, and when I came to the meaningless jumble,
"In thunder two," a flash flooded the chamber, and a sudden fear struck
into my mind. Who knew what insane experiment might have come into that
boy's head?

With sudden impulse, I went downstairs, and found the whole house
empty, until a stupid old woman, coming in from the wood-house with her
apron full of turnips, told me that Severance had been missing since
nightfall, after being for a week in bed, dangerously ill, and
sometimes slightly delirious. The family had become alarmed, and were
out with lanterns, in search of him.

It was safe to say that none of them had more reason to be alarmed than
I. It was something, however, to know where to seek him. Meeting two
neighboring fishermen, I took them with me. As we approached the
well-known wall, the blast blew out our lights, and we could scarcely
speak. The lightning had grown less frequent, yet sheets of flame
seemed occasionally to break over the dark, square sides of the house,
and to send a flickering flame along the ridge-pole and eaves, like a
surf of light. A surf of water broke also behind us on the Blue Rocks,
sounding as if it pursued our very footsteps; and one of the men
whispered hoarsely to me, that a Nantucket brig had parted her cable,
and was drifting in shore.

As we entered the garden, lights gleamed in the shrubbery. To my
surprise, it was Paul and his wife, with their two oldest
children,--these last being quite delighted with the stir, and showing
so much illumination, in the lee of the house, that it was quite a
Feast of Lanterns. They seemed a little surprised at meeting us, too;
but we might as well have talked from Point Judith to Beaver Tail as to
have attempted conversation there. I walked round the building; but a
flash of lightning showed nothing on the western piazza save a
birch-tree, which lay across, blown down by the storm. I therefore went
inside, with Paul's household, leaving the fishermen without.

Never shall I forget that search. As we went from empty room to room,
the thunder seemed rolling on the very roof, and the sharp flashes of
lightning appeared to put out our lamps and then kindle them again. We
traversed the upper regions, mounting by a ladder to the attic; then
descended into the cellar and the wine-vault. The thorough bareness of
the house, the fact that no bright-eye