e thunder. And then the
hurricane struck them, and they half-ran and were half-carried down the
rear slope of the hill. Now they saw for the first time that the people
were gone. The instinct of self-preservation had proven stronger than
their fanaticism, and a contagious panic had carried them into a
hay-barn near by.

Not knowing where the rest had gone, August and Julia only thought of
regaining the castle. They found the path blocked by fallen trees, and
it was slow and dangerous work, waiting for flashes of lightning to show
them their road. In making a long detour they lost the path. After some
minutes, in a lull in the thunder, August heard a shout, which he
answered, and presently Philosopher Andrew appeared with a lantern, his
grizzled hair and beard flying in the wind.

"What ho, my friends!" he cried. "This is the way you go to heaven
together! You'll live through many a storm yet!"

Guided by his thorough knowledge of the ground, they had almost reached
the castle, when they were startled by piteous cries. Leaving August
with Julia, Andrew climbed a fence, and went down into a ravine to find
poor Bill Day in an agony of terror, crying out in despair, believing
that the day of doom had already come, and that he was about to be sent
into well-deserved perdition. Andrew stooped over him with his lantern,
but the poor fellow, giving one look at the shaggy face, shrieked madly,
and rushed away into the woods.

"I believe," said the Philosopher, when he got back to August, "I
believe he took me for the devil."

CHAPTER XLIV.

SQUARING ACCOUNTS.

The summer storm had spent itself by daylight, and the sun rose on that
morning after the world's end much as it had risen on other mornings,
but it looked down upon prostrate trees and scattered fences and
roofless barns. And the minds of the people were in much the same
disheveled state as the landscape. One simple-minded girl was a maniac.
Some declared that the world had ended, and that this was the new earth,
if people only had faith to receive it; some still waited for the end,
and with some the reaction from credulity had already set in, a reaction
that carried them into the blankest atheism and boldest immorality.
People who had spent the summer in looking for a change that would
relieve them from all responsibility, now turned reluctantly
toward the commonplace drudgery of life. It is the evil of all
day-dreaming--day-dreaming about the other world in