storm increased every moment.  The flashes of lightning were but a few seconds apart, and the roll of thunder was incessant.  Every few moments, above this continued roar, would come an appalling crash which sounded just above our heads.  The children were screaming with fear, the servants had come into the hall and seemed in a helpless sort of panic.  Sophie was very pale and Mary Leighton clung hysterically to her.  Charlotte Benson was the only one who seemed to be self-possessed enough to have done anything, if there had been anything to do.  But there was not.  All we could do was to try to behave ourselves with fortitude in view of the personal danger, and with composure in view of that of others.  Presently there came a lull in the tempest, and we began to breathe freer; some one went to the door and opened it.  A gust of cold wind swept through the hall and put out the lamp, at which the children and Mary Leighton renewed their cries of fright.

The respite in the tempest was but temporary; before the lamp was relit and order restored, the storm had burst again upon us.  This was, if anything, fiercer, but shorter lived.  After fifteen or twenty minutes’ rage, it subsided almost utterly, and we could hear it taking itself off across the heavens.  I suppose the whole storm, from its beginning to its end, had not occupied more than three quarters of an hour, but it had seemed much longer.

We were very glad to open the door and let the cool, damp air into the hall.  The children were taken up-stairs, consoled with the promise that word should be sent to them when their uncles should return.  The servants went feebly off to their domain; one was sent to sweep the piazza, for the rain had beaten in such torrents upon it that it was impossible to walk there, till it should be brushed away.  Wrapped in their shawls, Henrietta and Charlotte Benson walked up and down the space that the servant swept, and watched and listened for a long half-hour.  I took a cloak from the rack and, leaning against the door-post, stood and listened silently.

From the direction of the river there was nothing to be heard.  There was still distant thunder, but that was the only sound, that and the dripping of the rain off the leaves of the drenched trees.  The wind was almost silent, and in the spaces of the broken clouds there were occasional faint stars.  A fine, young tree, uprooted by the tempest, lay across the carriage-way before the house, its topmost branches resting on the steps of the piazza:  the grass was strewed with leaves like autumn, and the paths were simply pools of water.  Sophie, more than once, came to the door, and begged us to come in, for fear of the dampness and the cold, but no one heeded her suggestion.  Even she herself came out very often, and looked and listened anxiously.  Finally my ear caught a sound:  I ran down the steps, and bent forward eagerly.  There was some one coming along the garden-path that led up from the river.  I could hear the water plashing as he walked, and he was coming rapidly.  In a moment the others heard it too, and starting to the steps, stood still, and waited breathlessly.  He had no lantern, for we could have seen that; he was almost at the steps before I could recognize him.  It was Richard.  I gave a smothered cry, and springing forward, held out my hands to stop him.