troubled in the same way,
and advised him to read the newspapers. "My good wife," said he, "has
brought me a whole file of the Cape Gazette. I'd read them if I was you.
The deuce is in it, if you don't rake up something or other."

Christopher thanked him warmly for this: he got the papers to his own
little room, and had always one or two in his pocket for reading. At
first he found a good many hard words that puzzled him; and he borrowed
a pencil of Phoebe, and noted them down. Strange to say, the words that
puzzled him were always common words, that his unaccountable memory had
forgotten: a hard word, he was sure to remember that.

One day he had to ask Falcon the meaning of "spendthrift." Falcon told
him briefly. He could have illustrated the word by a striking example;
but he did not. He added, in his polite way, "No fellow can understand
all the words in a newspaper. Now, here's a word in mine--'Anemometer;'
who the deuce can understand such a word?"

"Oh, THAT is a common word enough," said poor Christopher. "It means a
machine for measuring the force of the wind."

"Oh, indeed," said Falcon; but did not believe a word of it.

One sultry day Christopher had a violent headache, and complained
to Ucatella. She told Phoebe, and they bound his brows with a wet
handkerchief, and advised him to keep in-doors. He sat down in the
coolest part of the house, and held his head with his hands, for it
seemed as if it would explode into two great fragments.

All in a moment the sky was overcast with angry clouds, whirling this
way and that. Huge drops of hail pattered down, and the next minute came
a tremendous flash of lightning, accompanied, rather than followed, by a
crash of thunder close over their heads.

This was the opening. Down came a deluge out of clouds that looked
mountains of pitch, and made the day night but for the fast and furious
strokes of lightning that fired the air. The scream of wind and awful
peals of thunder completed the horrors of the scene.

In the midst of this, by what agency I know no more than science or
a sheep does, something went off inside Christopher's head, like a
pistol-shot. He gave a sort of scream, and dashed out into the weather.

Phoebe heard his scream and his flying footstep, and uttered an
ejaculation of fear. The whole household was alarmed, and, under other
circumstances, would have followed him; but you could not see ten yards.

A chill sense of impending misfortune s