ontiguity of
the road. This part was consequently the deepest, and, in floods, the
most dangerous; for the banks were elevated as far as they went, and
quite tortuositous.

"Shortly after the priest had entered the chapel, it was observed
that the hemisphere became, of a sudden, unusually obscure, though the
preceding part of the day had not only been uncloudously bright, but hot
in a most especial manner. The obscurity, however, increased rapidly,
accompanied by that gloomy stillness which always takes precedence of a
storm, and fills the mind with vague and interminable terror. But this
ominous silence was not long unfractured; for soon after the first
appearance of the gloom, a flash of lightning quivered through the
chapel, followed by an extragavantly loud clap of thunder, which shook
the very glass in the windows, and filled the congregation to the brim
with terror. Their dismay, however, would have been infinitely greater,
only for the presence of his Reverence, and the confidence which might
be traced to the solemn occasion on which they were assimilated.

"From this moment the storm became progressive in dreadful magnitude,
and the thunder, in concomitance with the most vivid flashes of
lightning, pealed through the sky, with an awful grandeur and
magnificence, that were exalted and even rendered more sublime by
the still solemnity of religious worship. Every heart now prayed
fervently--every spirit shrunk into a deep sense of its own guilt and
helplessness--and every conscience was terror-stricken, as the voice of
an angry God thundered out of his temple of storms though the heavens;
for truly, as the Authorized Version has it, 'darkness was under his
feet, and his pavilion round about was dark waters, and thick clouds of
the skies, because he was wroth.'

"The rain now condescended in even-down torrents, and thunder succeeded
thunder in deep and terrific peals, whilst the roar of the gigantic
echoes that deepened and reverberated among the glens and hollows,
'laughing in their mountain mirth,'--hard fortune to me, but they made
the flesh creep on my bones!

"This lasted for an hour, when the thunder slackened: but the rain still
continued. As soon as mass was over, and the storm had elapsed, except
an odd peal which might be heard rolling at a distance behind the hills,
the people began gradually to repover their spirits, and enter into
confabulation; but to venture out was still impracticable. For
about