flat on her face
and he alongside of her; but the twinkling of an eye before that he had
seized the block of wood, rejected some time before as a chair, and
stood it on end beside his shoulder, keeping his right arm curved round
it so as to hold it upright in position, while the other arm prevented
Maggie from rising.

"Don't move?" he shouted amid the crashing of timbers and the roaring
of the gale; "lie still and you won't be hurt."

She could not have disobeyed him had she tried, for the words were in
his mouth when the fearful mass of timber descended upon them.

CHAPTER III.

Do you understand what Tim Hunter did? Had the mass of timber
descending upon him and his sister been unchecked, they would not have
lived an instant. Had it been shattered into small fragments by the
cyclone, the ingenious precaution which a wonderful presence of mind
enabled hint to make, would have been of no avail.

Take a block of seasoned oak, six inches through, and two feet in
height, and interpose it squarely against an approaching body and it is
almost as powerful in the way of resistance as so much metal. It would
take an ironclad to crush it to pulp, by acting longitudinally or along
its line of length. This block stood upright, and received a portion
of the rafters, covered by the shingles and held them aloft as easily
as you can hold your hat with your outstretched arm. From this point
of highest support, the debris sloped away until it rested on the
floor, but the open space, in which the brother and sister lay, was as
safe as was their situation, before the gale loosened the structure.

Tim called to his sister and found that not so much as a hair of her
head had been harmed, and it was the same with himself. All was
darkness in their confined quarters, but the wrenched framework gave
them plenty of air to breathe.

Who can picture the feelings of the father, when he saw the collapse of
the roof of the barn and knew that his two children were beneath? He
rushed thither like a madman, only to be cheered to the highest
thankfulness the next moment at hearing their muffled assurances that
both were all right. A brief vigorous application of his axe and the
two were helped out into the open air, neither the worse for their
dreadful experience.

The parent could hardly believe what had been done by his boy, when
Maggie told him, until an examination for himself showed that it was
true. He declared that neit