"I looked around, when I heard the noise. The same instant there came a blinding, dazzling light; then, that awful vacuous rattle in the throat of thunder that tells it comes in the name of Death the destroyer.
"'Oh, Allie, come away!' I screamed.
"In obedience to my wish, she leaned towards me; but, oh, her face! I caught her, ere she fell, even. I sent out the wings of my voice, but no one heard me, no one came. I could not lift her in my arms, so I laid her upon the floor, and ran down.
"'Go to Alice,—the lightning!' was all I could say, and it was enough.
I heard groans before I gained the street.
"My pale, silent sister was stronger than the storm which flapped its wings around me and threatened to take me to its eyry; but it did not; it permitted me to gain Doctor Percival's door. I was dazzled with the lightning, only my brain was distinct with 'its skeleton of woe,' when I found myself in your father's house.
"I could not see the faces that were there. I asked for Doctor Percival. Some one answered, 'He is not come home. What has happened?' and Mary ran forward in alarm.
"'It is lightning! Oh, come!' was all that I could utter; and with me there went out into the pouring rain every soul that was there when I went in.
"'She is dead; there is nothing to be done.'
"Three hours after the stroke, these words came. Then I looked up. Alice, with her little white face of perfect beauty, lay upon that bed. Thunder-storms would never more make her tremble, never awake to fear the spirit gone. It was Doctor Percival from whom these fateful words came. I had had so much hope! In very desperation of feeling, I strove to look up to his face. My eyes were arrested before they reached him.
"'By what?' did you ask?"