ement. Suspicion fell upon
a notorious thief who was in the same ward, and who had some time before
proposed to another man to take the box. On his examination he accused
two others of the theft, but with such equivocation in his tale as
clearly proved the falsehood of it. As there was no evidence against him,
except the proposal just mentioned, he was discharged, and during the
month nothing was heard of the watches. An old man belonging to the
hospital was robbed at the same time of eight guineas and some dollars,
which he had got together for the purpose of paying for his passage and
provisions in any ship that would take him home.

During a storm of rain and thunder which happened in the afternoon of
Saturday the 26th, two convict lads Dennis Reardon and William Meredith,
who were employed in cutting wood just by the town when the rain
commenced, ran to a tree for shelter, where they were found the next
morning lying dead, together with a dog which followed them. There was no
doubt that the shelter which they sought had proved their destruction,
having been struck dead by lightning, one or two flashes of which had
been observed to be very vivid and near. One of them, when he received
the stroke, had his hands in his bosom; the hands of the other were
across his breast, and he seemed to have had something in them. The
pupils of their eyes were considerably dilated, and the tongue of each,
as well as that of the dog, was forced out between the teeth. Their faces
were livid, and the same appearance was visible on several parts of their
bodies. The tree at the foot of which they were found was barked at the
top, and some of its branches torn off. In the evening they were decently
buried in one grave, to which they were attended by many of their
fellow-prisoners. Mr. Johnson, to a discourse which he afterwards
preached on the subject, prefixed as a text these words from the first
book of Samuel, chap xx verse 3. 'There is but a step between me and
death.'

This was the first accident of the kind that, to our knowledge, had
occurred in the colony, though lightning more vivid and alarming had
often been seen in storms of longer duration.

While every one was expecting our colonial vessel, the _Francis_, from
New Zealand. the signal for a sail was made on the 29th; and shortly
after the _Fairy_, an American snow, anchored in the cove from Boston in
New England, and last from the island of St. Paul, whence she had a
pass