u could attach much
credit, that could satisfactorily prove to you that he had. When you
pushed him hard, it always came out that he was not the person who had
seen it; but some one else who had related the tale to him, and he had
every reason to believe it true. The farther you searched into the
matter, the more indistinct and improbable the story became."

"Ay, Bill Corbett; but you heard Bob declare that he has both seen and
spoken to it, and the lad must know his own father."

"I don't take for gospel what I hear Bob say; I don't believe one word
of the story. No, not if he were to swear to the truth of it upon the
Bible," said the carpenter, waxing warm. Before Tom Weston could reply,
a loud peal of thunder burst suddenly over their heads, and the room was
so vividly lighted up by the electric flash which preceded it, that
Mary, who was intently listening to the conversation, rose from her
seat with a loud scream.

"By the living Jingo! What's that?" cried the labourer, starting to his
feet, while the pipe he was smoking fell from his nerveless grasp and
was shivered to atoms on the hearth.

"Pshaw!" said Tom Weston, recovering from the sudden tremor which had
seized him, "'tis only the poor dummy. I thought the gal had been deaf
as well as dumb."

"Why, man, the dead in their graves might have heard that!" said the
terror-stricken Josh.

He had scarcely ceased speaking, when Sophy Grimshawe sprang into the
room--her eyes fixed and staring, and her usually rosy cheeks livid with
fear. "The thunder," she gasped, "the dreadful thunder!" and would have
fallen to the ground, had not Tom Weston caught her in his arms. The
unexpected sight of such a beautiful apparition, seemed to restore the
young man's presence of mind. He placed her in a chair, while the little
tailor bustled up to get a glass of cold water, with which he copiously
bathed her face and hands. In a few minutes her limbs ceased to tremble,
and opening her eyes, she glanced timidly round her. The first object
that encountered her gaze, was the scornful, fiendlike face of Mrs.
Mason, scowling upon her.

"So," she said sneeringly, "you make the thunder a pretext for showing
your painted doll's-face to the fellows here. Your mother would do well
to keep you at home."

"Mother was asleep, and she is not afraid of thunder like me. When that
dreadful flash of lightning came, I dared not stay alone in the house."

"Are you a bit safer, think you, here