Him and magnify
Him for ever!"

In full chords of passionate praise the hurricane swept its grand anthem
through the rustling, swaying trees, as though these were the strings of
a giant harp on which some great Archangel played,--and the dash and
roar of the sea came with it, rolling in the track of another mighty
peal of thunder. Helmsley stopped and listened, seized by an
overpowering enchantment and awe.

"This--this is Life!" he said, half aloud--"Our miserable human
vanities--our petty schemes--our poor ambitions--what are they? Motes in
a sunbeam!--gone as soon as realised! But Life,--the deep,
self-contained divine Life of Nature--this is the only life that lives
for ever, the Immortality of which we are a part!"

A fierce gust of wind here snapped asunder a great branch from a tree,
and flung it straight across his path. Had he been a few inches nearer,
it would have probably struck him down with it. Charlie peeped out from
under his arm with a pitiful little whimper, and Helmsley's heart smote
him.

"Poor wee Charlie!" he said, fondling the tiny head; "I know what you
would say to me! You would say that if I want to risk my own life, I
needn't risk yours! Is that it? Well!--I'll try to get you out of this
if I can! I wish I I could see some sign of a house anywhere! I'd make
for it and ask for shelter."

He trudged patiently onwards,--but he was beginning to feel unsteady in
his limbs,--and every now and then he had to stop, overcome by a
sickening sensation of giddiness. The tempest had now fully developed
into a heavy thunderstorm, and the lightning quivered and gleamed
through the trees incessantly, followed by huge claps of thunder which
clashed down without a second's warning, afterwards rolling away in long
thudding detonations echoing for miles and miles. It was difficult to
walk at all in such a storm,--the youngest and strongest pedestrian
might have given way under the combined onslaught of rain, wind, and the
pattering shower of leaves which were literally torn, fresh and green,
from their parent boughs and cast forth to whirl confusedly amid the
troubled spaces of the air. And if the young and strong would have found
it hard to brave such an uproar of the elements, how much harder was it
for an old man, who, deeming himself stronger than he actually was, and
buoyed up by sheer nerve and mental obstinacy, had, of his own choice,
brought himself into this needless plight and danger. For now, in