looked up at the
illuminated sky, one seemed to be looking down at a mountainous
landscape. The clouds, rent apart, torn, and shattered, were like
masses of high hills, inky black on the summits, with copper-colored
precipices and glistening purple slopes; and in remote depths of the
valleys, where there should have been lakes of water, there were lakes
of fire. In the intervals between the flashes, when suddenly the sky
became dark, one had a sensation that the earth had swung right again,
and that it was now under one's feet as usual instead of being over
one's head.

Dale plodding along thought of all he had read about thunder-storms.
It was quite true, what he said to Norah. Lightning strikes the
highest object. That was why trees had got such a bad name for
themselves; although, as a fact, you were often a jolly sight safer
under a tree than out in the open. Salisbury Plain, he had read, was
the most dangerous place in England; for the reason that, because of
its bareness, it made a six-foot man as conspicuous, upstanding an
object as a church tower or a factory chimney would be elsewhere. And
he thought that if any cattle had been left out in those wide flat
fields near the Baptist Chapel, they were now in great peril. Mav's
cows were all safe under cover.

Then, stimulated by a new thought, he began to walk faster. He hurried
on until he came to the middle of the flats; then, gropingly through
the darkness, and swiftly through the light, he made his way to a gate
that he had just seen standing high and solid between the low field
banks. He climbed the gate, a leg on each side, to the top bar but
one; and there, easily balancing himself, he stood high above every
other object.

And he thought: "If I am to be killed, I shall be killed now. I stand
here at God's pleasure, to take me or leave me."

He carefully observed the lightning. It fell like a live shot, a
discharge of artillery aimed at a fixed point, and then bursting
seemed to go out in all directions till it faded with a widespread
glare. During this final glare after each discharge the land to its
farthest horizon leaped into view. Thus he saw all at once the Baptist
Chapel several hundred yards away, but seeming to be close ahead of
him, much bigger than it actually was, looking familiar and yet
strange--looking like the ark waiting to be floated as soon as the
deluge should begin. At the same moment he saw the stones in the road,
blades of grass at