The rain now fell in sheets.
"Hurry up 'n' git under cover, Jabe," said Brad Gibson;
"you're jest the kind of a pole to draw lightnin'!"
"You hain't, then!" retorted Jabe. "There ain't enough o'
you fer lightnin' to ketch holt of!"
Suddenly a ghastly streak of light leaped out of a cloud,
and then another, till the sky seemed lit up by cataracts
of flame. A breath of wind sprang into the still air.
Then a deafening crash, clap, crack, roar, peal! and as Jabe
Slocum looked out of a protecting shed door, he saw a fiery
ball burst from the clouds, shooting brazen arrows as it fell.
Within the instant the meeting-house steeple broke into a tongue
of flame, and then, looking towards home, he fancied
that the fireball dropped to earth in Squire Bean's meadow.
The wind blew more fiercely now. There was a sudden
crackling of wood, falling of old timers, and breaking of glass.
The deadly fluid ran in a winding course down a great maple
by the shed, leaving a narrow charred channel through the bark
to tell how it passed to earth.
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