promised that the stacks should be seen to, and now they are all
neglected! Can I do anything to help? Liddy is afraid to come out.
Fancy finding you here at such an hour! Surely I can do something?"

"You can bring up some reed-sheaves to me, one by one, ma'am; if you
are not afraid to come up the ladder in the dark," said Gabriel.
"Every moment is precious now, and that would save a good deal of
time. It is not very dark when the lightning has been gone a bit."

"I'll do anything!" she said, resolutely. She instantly took a sheaf
upon her shoulder, clambered up close to his heels, placed it behind
the rod, and descended for another. At her third ascent the rick
suddenly brightened with the brazen glare of shining majolica--every
knot in every straw was visible. On the slope in front of him
appeared two human shapes, black as jet. The rick lost its
sheen--the shapes vanished. Gabriel turned his head. It had been
the sixth flash which had come from the east behind him, and the two
dark forms on the slope had been the shadows of himself and
Bathsheba.

Then came the peal. It hardly was credible that such a heavenly
light could be the parent of such a diabolical sound.

"How terrible!" she exclaimed, and clutched him by the sleeve.
Gabriel turned, and steadied her on her aerial perch by holding
her arm. At the same moment, while he was still reversed in his
attitude, there was more light, and he saw, as it were, a copy of the
tall poplar tree on the hill drawn in black on the wall of the barn.
It was the shadow of that tree, thrown across by a secondary flash
in the west.

The next flare came. Bathsheba was on the ground now, shouldering
another sheaf, and she bore its dazzle without flinching--thunder
and all--and again ascended with the load. There was then a silence
everywhere for four or five minutes, and the crunch of the spars, as
Gabriel hastily drove them in, could again be distinctly heard. He
thought the crisis of the storm had passed. But there came a burst
of light.

"Hold on!" said Gabriel, taking the sheaf from her shoulder, and
grasping her arm again.

Heaven opened then, indeed. The flash was almost too novel for its
inexpressibly dangerous nature to be at once realized, and they could
only comprehend the magnificence of its beauty. It sprang from
east, west, north, south, and was a perfect dance of death. The
forms of skeletons appeared in the air, shaped with blue fire for
bo