Vashti's Fate — page 281: what you’re looking at

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

_— Ta ee eh = Ee oe Oe > a yey 2 = SO ee ce Ae yw ye A ee “* ae *~ S - ey re ee Ro gy =. Cw -* Yat at hase ” - ; f a . — _) »* 3 , 4 eS ~ vs * . > i ~ “Ss > ye < < ~~ 4 = . - * ; . . ' ~ - p> : * 276 LIGHTNING-STRUCK. S the lightning, they caught glimpses of her, tearing away through the trees, and Nora would have instantly followed but for her aunt’s restraining hand. ‘Let us find Hubert and Philip,” she said, ‘‘and send them out with lanterns after her. You could do nothing.” Just as Philip and Hubert sallied out, each armed with a lantern, a stream of lightning poured about them, lasting for several seconds, and most intense in brilliancy. At the same instant, almost, the thunder crashed apparently very near them, with a sound as though every tree in the grounds had been rent asunder. Appalled, but more than ever alarmed for Vashti, they plunged forward through the hurricane and the flood, aim- ing as nearly as they could in their bewilderment for the direction in which the frightened girl had last been seen, and thence instinctively made for the stream which crossed the grounds near here, with a deep, but unuttered fear that she might have fallen into it. With a most terrible misgiving, they discovered, not by the glare of the lightning, or the feeble ray of their lanterns, but by the roar of the waters along their banks, that the floods of rain that had fallen, had raised the stream to an unparalleled degree. Kach was about to express his dismay to the other, when, in the same instant, the eyes of each fell upon the object of their search, cowering right in their path. She was quite incapable of motion, and as one lifted her in his strong arms, while the other took the lanterns, she made no sound, though she was evidently still breathing. They bore her in, and laid her, with her dripping gar-" ments and stony face, upon the bed she had so lately left ; and while Nora, sobbing brokenly, wrung the water con