st office.

"There comes John Henry Carter," said Marilla.

John Henry came wading through the hailstones with a rather scared grin.

"Oh, ain't this awful, Miss Cuthbert? Mr. Harrison sent me over to see
if yous had come out all right."

"We're none of us killed," said Marilla grimly, "and none of the
buildings was struck. I hope you got off equally well."

"Yas'm. Not quite so well, ma'am. We was struck. The lightning knocked
over the kitchen chimbly and come down the flue and knocked over
Ginger's cage and tore a hole in the floor and went into the sullar.
Yas'm."

"Was Ginger hurt?" queried Anne.

"Yas'm. He was hurt pretty bad. He was killed." Later on Anne went over
to comfort Mr. Harrison. She found him sitting by the table, stroking
Ginger's gay dead body with a trembling hand.

"Poor Ginger won't call you any more names, Anne," he said mournfully.

Anne could never have imagined herself crying on Ginger's account, but
the tears came into her eyes.

"He was all the company I had, Anne . . . and now he's dead. Well, well,
I'm an old fool to care so much. I'll let on I don't care. I know you're
going to say something sympathetic as soon as I stop talking . . . but
don't. If you did I'd cry like a baby. Hasn't this been a terrible
storm? I guess folks won't laugh at Uncle Abe's predictions again. Seems
as if all the storms that he's been prophesying all his life that never
happened came all at once. Beats all how he struck the very day though,
don't it? Look at the mess we have here. I must hustle round and get
some boards to patch up that hole in the floor."

Avonlea folks did nothing the next day but visit each other and
compare damages. The roads were impassable for wheels by reason of the
hailstones, so they walked or rode on horseback. The mail came late with
ill tidings from all over the province. Houses had been struck, people
killed and injured; the whole telephone and telegraph system had been
disorganized, and any number of young stock exposed in the fields had
perished.

Uncle Abe waded out to the blacksmith's forge early in the morning and
spent the whole day there. It was Uncle Abe's hour of triumph and he
enjoyed it to the full. It would be doing Uncle Abe an injustice to say
that he was glad the storm had happened; but since it had to be he was
very glad he had predicted it . . . to the very day, too. Uncle Abe forgot
that he had ever denied setting the day. As for the trifling discrepa