they were this morning.  The streams they crossed were clear and cold, the sun shone hot upon them, but the sky was so blue and the earth so green that they both abandoned themselves to the pleasure of living with such a sky above and such a world beneath.  There were here and there a few settlers’ houses, but not yet a great many.  The country was not a lonely one for all that.  Every now and then the frightened prairie-chickens ran across the road or rose with their quick, whirring flight; ten thousand katydids and grasshoppers were jumping, fluttering, flying, and fiddling their rattling notes, and the air seemed full of life.  They were considerably delayed by Albert’s excursions after new insects, for he had brought his collecting-box and net along.  So that when, about the middle of the afternoon, as they stopped, in fording a brook, to water old Prince, and were suddenly startled by the sound of thunder, Albert felt a little conscience-smitten that he had not traveled more diligently toward his destination.  And when he drove on a quarter of a mile, he found himself in a most unpleasant dilemma, the two horns being two roads, concerning which those who directed him had neglected to give him any advice.  Katy had been here before, and she was very sure that to the right hand was the road.  There was now no time to turn back, for the storm was already upon them—­one of those fearful thunderstorms to which the high Minnesota table-land is peculiarly liable.  In sheer desperation, Charlton took the right-hand road, not doubting that he could at least find shelter for the night in some settler’s shanty.  The storm was one not to be imagined by those who have not seen its like, not to be described by any one.  The quick succession of flashes of lightning, the sudden, sharp, unendurable explosions, before, behind, and on either side, shook the nerves of Charlton and drove little Katy frantic.  For an hour they traveled through the drenching rain, their eyes blinded every minute by lightning; for an hour they expected continually that the next thunder-bolt would smite them.  All round them, on that treeless prairie, the lightning seemed to fall, and with every new blaze they held their breath for fear of sudden death.  Charlton wrapped Katy in every way he could, but still the storm penetrated all the wrapping, and the cold rain chilled them both to the core.  Katy, on her part, was frightened, lest the lightning should strike Brother Albert.  Muffled in shawls, she felt tolerably safe from a thunderbolt, but it was awful to think that Brother Albert sat out there, exposed to the lightning.  And in this time of trouble and danger, Charlton held fast to his sister.  He felt a brave determination never to suffer Smith Westcott to have her.  And if he had only lived in the middle ages, he would doubtless have challenged the fellow to mortal combat.  Now, alas! civilization was in his way.