The
storm's at the burstin'!"

"Storm!" said Gourlay. He had a horror of lightning since the day of his
birth.

"Ay, we're in for a pelter. What have you been doing that you didna
see't?"

They went to the window. The fronting heavens were a black purple. The
thunder, which had been growling in the distance, swept forward and
roared above the town. The crash no longer rolled afar, but cracked
close to the ear, hard, crepitant. Quick lightning stabbed the world in
vicious and repeated hate. A blue-black moistness lay heavy on the
cowering earth. The rain came--a few drops at first, sullen, as if loath
to come, that splashed on the pavement wide as a crown piece; then a
white rush of slanting spears. A great blob shot in through the window,
open at the top, and spat wide on Gourlay's cheek. It was lukewarm. He
started violently--that warmth on his cheek brought the terror so near.

The heavens were rent with a crash, and the earth seemed on fire.
Gourlay screamed in terror.

The baker put his arm round him in kindly protection.

"Tuts, man, dinna be feared," he said. "You're John Gourlay's son, ye
know. You ought to be a hardy man."

"Ay, but I'm no," chattered John, the truth coming out in his fear. "I
just let on to be."

But the worst was soon over. Lightning, both sheeted and forked, was
vivid as ever, but the thunder slunk growling away.

"The heavens are opening and shutting like a man's eye," said Gourlay.
"Oh, it's a terrible thing the world!" and he covered his face with his
hands.

A flash shot into a mounded wood far away. "It stabbed it like a
dagger!" stared Gourlay.

"Look, look, did ye see yon? It came down in a broad flash--then jerked
to the side--then ran down to a sharp point again. It was like the
coulter of a plough."

Suddenly a blaze of lightning flamed wide, and a fork shot down its
centre.

"That," said Gourlay, "was like a red crack in a white-hot furnace
door."

"Man, you're a noticing boy," said the baker.

"Ay," said John, smiling in curious self-interest, "I notice things too
much. They give me pictures in my mind. I'm feared of them, but I like
to think them over when they're by."

Boys are slow of confidence to their elders, but Gourlay's terror and
the baker's kindness moved him to speak. In a vague way he wanted to
explain.

"I'm no feared of folk," he went on, with a faint return to his swagger.
"But things get in on me. A body seems so wee compared with that"--