As she lifted her face from her hands she was surprised at the sudden gloom that since she last looked out had settled like a pall over the sky, darkening the church, rendering even the monuments indistinct.

Hero began to whine and bark, and, starting from her seat, Regina hurried toward the steps leading down from the organ-loft.  Ere she reached them a fearful sound like the roaring of a vast flood broke the prophetic silence, then a blinding lurid flash seemed to wrap everything in flame; there was simultaneously an awful detonating crash, as if the pillars of the universe had given way, and the initial note ushered in the thunder-fugue of the tempest, that raged as if the Destroying Angel rode upon its blast.

In the height of its fury it bowed the ancient elms as if they were mere reeds, and shook the stone church to its foundations as a giant shakes a child’s toy.

Frightened by the trembling of the building, Regina began to descend the stairs, guided by the incessant flashes of lightning, but when about half-way down a terrific peal of thunder so startled her that she missed a step, grasped at the balustrade but failed to find it, and rolled helplessly to the floor of the vestibule.  Stunned and mute with terror, she attempted to rise, but her left foot, crushed under her in the fall, refused to serve her, and with a desperate instinct of faith she crawled through the inside door and down the aisle, seeking refuge at the altar of God.  Dragging the useless member, she reached the chancel at last, and as the lightning showed her the railing, she laid herself down, and clasped the mahogany balusters in both hands.

In the ghastly electric light she saw the wild eyes of the lion in the pulpit window glaring at her,—­but over all the holy smile of Christ, as, looking down in benediction, He soared away heavenward; and above the howling of the hurricane rose her cry to Him who stilleth tempests, and saith to wind and sea, “Peace, be still!”:  “O Jesus! save me, that I may see my mother once more!”

She imagined there was a lull, certainly the shrieking of the gale seemed to subside, but only for half a moment, and in the doubly fierce renewal of elemental strife, amid deafening peals if thunder and the unearthly glare that preceded each reverberation, there came other sounds more appalling, and as the church rocked and quivered some portion of the ancient edifice fell, adding its crash to the diapason of the storm.

Believing that the roof was falling upon her, Regina shut her eyes, and in after years she recalled vividly two sensations that seemed her last on earth:  one, the warm touch of Hero’s tongue on her clenched fingers; the other, a supernatural wail that came down from the gallery, and that even then she knew was born in the organ.  Was it the weird fingering of the sacrilegious cyclone that concentrated its rage upon the venerable sanctuary?  After a little while the fury of the wind spent itself, but the rain began to fall heavily, and the electricity drama continued with unabated vigour and fierceness.