“Come from the window instantly, Mr. Sutherland.  How can you be so imprudent!” cried Mrs. Elton, her usually calm voice elevated in command, but tremulous with fear.

“Why, Mrs. Elton,” answered Hugh on whose temper, as well as conduct, recent events had had their operation, “do you think the devil makes the thunder?”

Lady Emily gave a faint shriek, whether out of reverence for the devil, or fear of God, I hesitate to decide; and flitting out of the room, dived into her bed, and drew the clothes over her head —­ at least so she was found at a later period of the day.  Euphra walked up to the window beside Hugh, as if to show her approval of his rudeness; and stood looking out with eyes that filled their own night with home-born flashes, though her lip was pale, and quivered a little.  Mrs. Elton, confounded at Hugh’s reply, and perhaps fearing the house might in consequence share the fate of Sodom, notwithstanding the presence of a goodly proportion of the righteous, fled, accompanied by the housekeeper, to the wine-cellar.  The rest of the household crept into corners, except the coachman, who, retaining his composure, in virtue of a greater degree of insensibility from his nearer approximation to the inanimate creation, emptied the jug of ale intended for the dinner of the company, and went out to look after his horses.

But there was one in the house who, left alone, threw the window wide open; and, with gently clasped hands and calm countenance, looked up into the heavens; and the clearness of whose eye seemed the prophetic symbol of the clearness that rose all untroubled above the turmoil of the earthly storm.  Truly God was in the storm; but there was more of God in the clear heaven beyond; and yet more of Him in the eye that regarded the whole with a still joy, in which was mingled no dismay.

Euphra, Hugh, and Harry were left together, looking out upon the storm.  Hugh could not speak in Harry’s presence.  At length the boy sat down in a dark corner on the floor, concealed from the others by a window-curtain.  Hugh thought he had left the room.

“Euphra,” he began.

Euphra looked round for Harry, and not seeing him, thought likewise that he had left the room:  she glided away without making any answer to Hugh’s invocation.

He stood for a few moments in motionless despair; then glancing round the room, and taking in all its desertedness, caught up his hat, and rushed out into the storm.  It was the best relief his feelings could have had; for the sullen gloom, alternated with bursts of flame, invasions of horrid uproar, and long wailing blasts of tyrannous wind, gave him his own mood to walk in; met his spirit with its own element; widened, as it were, his microcosm to the expanse of the macrocosm around him.  All the walls of separation were thrown down, and he lived, not in his own frame, but in the universal frame of nature.  The world was for the time, to the reality of his feeling, what Schleiermacher, in his Monologen, describes it as being to man, an extension of the body in which he dwells.  His spirit flashed in the lightning, raved in the thunder, moaned in the wind, and wept in the rain.