come Elder Holloway and Mr. Murdoch. See the elder run! I hope he
won't try to get to Hawkins's. He'd better run for our house."

That was precisely the counsel given the good man by the editor, and
the elder said:

"I'd like to go there. I'd like to see that clever girl again. Come,
Murdoch; no time to lose!"

The blast was now coming lower, and the gloom was deepening.

Flash--rattle--boom--crash! came a glitter of lightning and a great
peal of thunder.

"Here it is!" cried Jack. "If it isn't a dry blast!"

It was something like the first hot breath of a hurricane. To and fro
swung the tottering old steeple for a moment, and then there was
another crash--a loud, grinding, splintering, roaring crash--as the
spire reeled heavily down, lengthwise, through the shattered roof of
the meeting-house! Except for Mary Ogden's cleverness, the ruins might
have fallen upon the crowded Sunday-school. Jack turned and ran for
home. He was a good runner, but he only just escaped the deluge
following that thunderbolt.

Jack turned upon reaching the house, and as he looked back he uttered a
loud exclamation, and out from the house rushed all the people who were
gathered there.

"Jingo!" Jack shouted. "The old hotel's gone, sure, this time!"

The burrowing spark had smoldered slowly along, until it felt the first
fanning of the rising gale. In another minute it flared as if under a
blowpipe, and soon a fierce sheet of flame came bursting through the
roof.

Down poured the rain; but the hottest of that blaze was roofed over,
and the fire had its own way with the empty addition.

"We couldn't help if we should try," exclaimed Mr. Ogden.

"I'll put on my old clothes, any way," said Jack. "Nobody knows what's
coming."

"I will, too," said his father.

Jack paused a moment, and said, from the foot of the stairs:

"The steeple's down,--right through the meeting-house. It has smashed
the whole church!"

The sight of the fire had made him withhold that news for a minute; but
now, for another minute, the fire was almost forgotten.

Elder Holloway began to say something in praise of Mary Ogden about her
leading out the class, but she darted away.

"Let me get by, Jack," she said. "Let me pass, please. They all would
have been killed if they had waited! But I was thinking only of my
class and the rain."

She ran up-stairs and Jack followed. Then the elder made a number of
improving remarks about discipline