ns cannot analyze or understand. Let this be as it may, the fact is
that Mac, after his second year, feared thunder no more.

In law a stroke of lightning is known as an Act of God. If such is the
case, it seems strange that this stroke should have fallen on Sunday
night and in a God-fearing and God-serving household. As a matter of
fact, Tom Jennings, his wife and three children had just driven home
from church at Breton Junction and Tom, assisted by Frank, his boy of
sixteen, had put up the horses. Then, as the cloud was an unusually
threatening one, they all gathered in the parlour.

It was the ordinary parlour of country people who are self-respecting
but neither well-to-do nor educated. There was a fancy organ, a flowered
carpet; there were gaudy vases and solemn-looking enlarged crayon
portraits. Near a stiffly curtained window was a sort of family altar--a
table on which lay a family Bible. This Bible, a ponderous embossed
volume with brass guards and clasps, reposed on a blue-velvet table
cover that almost reached the floor. On the cover was worked a cross and
a crown with the legend: "He Must Bear a Cross Who Would Wear a Crown."

When, the storm having burst on this household, Mac scratched at the
door, Tom Jennings himself, a tall, raw-boned, sunburnt man, rose and
let him in with some good-humoured remark. Mac was a young setter, with
white, silken, curly coat and black, silken, curly ears. He looked
self-consciously into the faces of the family, who were smiling at his
fears; then, with a queer expression on his face, as if he, too, knew it
was funny, he went to the family altar, pushed aside the embossed velvet
cover, and lay down under the table. The children laughed, Tom Jennings
and Frank, a lanky, handsome, serious-faced lad smiled. Mac always did
this in a thunderstorm.

Just before the blow came, they heard him, as if he were still
reflecting humorously upon his fears, tap the floor with his tail.
Immediately there was the shiver of broken glass, a crash, a child's
suppressed scream, and for a moment, as the lamp went out, blackness.
But only for a moment; for next, above the shining brass trimmings of
the Bible, there glowed for several vivid seconds blue-and-white flames
like a halo.

There was no very clear recollection of what happened afterward. Having
assured himself that wife and children were safe, Tom Jennings, followed
by the boy Frank, ran out into the yard by the side door which they