And August could hear the derisive shouts of Bill Day’s party, who had recovered their courage, crying out, “Go it, ole Dutchman!  I’ll bet on you!” He clenched his fist in anger, but his mother’s eyes, looking at him with quiet rebuke, pacified him in a moment.  Yet he could not help wondering whether blundering kinsfolk made people blush in the next world.

“Holt on doo de last ent!” continued Gottlieb.  “It’s pout goom!  Kood pye, ole moon!  You koes town, you nebber gooms pack no more already.”

This exhortation might have proceeded in this strain indefinitely, to the mortification of August and the amusement of the profane, had there not just at that moment broken upon the sultry stillness of the night one of those crescendo thunder-bursts, beginning in a distant rumble, and swelling out louder and still louder, until it ended with a tremendous detonation.  In the strange light of the setting moon, while everybody’s attention was engrossed by the excitement, the swift oncoming of a thunder-cloud had not been observed by any but Andrew, and it had already climbed half-way to the zenith, blotting out a third of the firmament.  This inverted thunder-bolt produced a startling effect upon the over-strained nerves of the crowd.  Some cried out with terror, some sobbed with hysterical agony, some shouted in triumph, and it was generally believed that Virginia Waters, who died a maniac many years afterward, lost her reason at that moment.  Bill Day ceased his mocking, and shook till his teeth chattered.  And none of his party dared laugh at him.  The moon had now gone, and the vivid lightning followed the thunder, and yet louder and more fearful thunder succeeded the lightning.  The people ran about as if demented, and Julia was left alone.  August had only one thought in all this confusion, and that was to find Julia.  Having found her, they clasped hands, and stood upon the brow of the hill calmly watching the coming tempest, believing it to be the coming of the end.  Between the claps of thunder they could hear the broken sentences of Elder Hankins, saying something about the lightning that shineth from one part of heaven to the other, and about the promised coming in the clouds.  But they did not much heed the words.  They were looking the blinding lightning in the face, and in their courageous trust they thought themselves ready to look into the flaming countenance of the Almighty, if they should be called before Him.  Every fresh burst of thunder seemed to August to be the rocking of the world, trembling in the throes of dissolution.  But the world might crumble or melt; there is something more enduring than the world.  August felt the everlastingness of love; as many another man in a supreme crisis has felt it.