Drivers whipped up their horses, and pedestrians hastened their steps.
Steve Webster decided not to run even the smallest risk of injuring so
precious a commodity as Doxy Morton by a shower of rain, so he drove into
a friend's yard, put up his horse, and waited till the storm should pass by.
Brad Gibson stooped to drink at a wayside brook, and as he bent over
the water he heard a low, murmuring, muttering sound that seemed to make
the earth tremble.

Then from hill to hill "leapt the live thunder."
Even the distant mountains seemed to have "found a tongue."
A zigzag chain of lightning flashed in the lurid sky,
and after an appreciable interval another peal, louder than
the first, and nearer.

The rain began to fall, the forked flashes of flame darted hither
and thither in the clouds, and the boom of heaven's artillery grew heavier
and heavier. The blinding sheets of light and the tumultuous roar of sound
now followed each other so quickly that they seemed almost simultaneous.
Flash--crash--flash--crash--flash--crash; blinding and deafening eye and ear
at once. Everybody who could find a shelter of any sort hastened to it.
The women at home set their children in the midst of feather beds,
and some of them even huddled there themselves, their babies clinging
to them in sympathetic fear, as the livid shafts of light illuminated
the dark rooms with more than noonday glare.

The air was full of gloom; a nameless terror lurked
within it; the elements seemed at war with each other.
Horses whinnied in the stables, and colts dashed about the pastures.
The cattle sought sheltered places; the cows ambling clumsily towards
some refuge, their full bags dripping milk as they swung heavily