Vashti's Fate — page 280: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

LIGHTNING-STRUCK. 275 away to consult Aunt Margery, who advised her to wait a while. The day was a sultry one, in the last of July, the air close, still, oppressive ; not a leaf stirring. Everybody and every- thing seemed languishing with heat. Toward nightfall this unnatural and brooding calm deepened. Suddenly, with scarce a note of warning, great clouds, black with thunder, whirled up over the. face of earth, covering it with thick darkness. ‘The wind came down with a swoop and a whis- tle, and amid incessant flashings of lightning and crashing of thunder, the rain leaped forth in floods. The house was the scene of the wildest dismay. Through the open window and doors upon which the tempest had burst with such unwarned abruptness, the storm swept like a hurricane, and the thunder seemed to shake the strong old house to its very foundation. All were hurrying hither and thither, with no light save the sheeted lightning, and scarcely able to hear each other’s voices above the din of the storm. It took their united strength to close the great hall door, and barit. One by one the remaining doors and windows were being closed. Margery Gresham and Nora were together, shutting the bay-window in the sitting-room. In the great and sudden tumult, neither had thought of Vashti, when all at once she started up like a ghost before them, moaning and wringing her hands like one insane with fright. She had always possessed a great dread of a thunder- storm, and this terrible war of the elements, bursting upon her in her anguished and despondent state, had almost shocked her out of her senses. Both Miss Gresham and Nora sprang toward her. She eluded their extended arms, sprang through the open win- dow, and out into the rain and darkness, By the glare of > =. COMICDOO co nm: