Never had I witnessed such a scene before, and I turned toward the darkness that I might hide the evidence of feelings that I could not control. A second later I sprang to my feet, exclaiming, "Wonderful!" Miss Warren came toward me with apprehension in her face, but I saw that she noted my moist eyes. I hastened from the room, saying, "Come out on the lawn, all of you, for we may now witness a scene that is grand indeed." CHAPTER XII ONE OF NATURE'S TRAGEDIES I had been so interested in Mrs. Yocomb's words, their effect on the little group around her, and the whole sacred mystery of the scene, that I had ceased to watch the smoking mountain, with its increasingly lurid apex. In the meantime the fire had fully reached the summit, on which stood a large dry tree, and it had become a skeleton of flame. Through this lurid fire and smoke the full moon was rising, its silver disk discolored and partially obscured. This scene alone, as we gathered on the piazza and lawn below it, might well have filled us with awe and wonder; but a more impressive combination was forming. Advancing from the southwest, up the star-lit sky, which the moon was brightening momentarily, was a cloud whose blackness and heaviness the vivid lightning made only the more apparent. "I am an old man," said Mr. Yocomb, "but I never saw anything so grand as this before." "Mother, mother," said little Zillah, "I'm afraid. Please take me upstairs and put me to bed." And the mother, to whom the scene in the heavens was a glorious manifestation of the God she loved rather than feared, denied herself of what was almost like a vision, for the sake of the child. "It's awful," said Adah; "I won't look at it any longer. I don't see why we can't have nice quiet showers that one can go to sleep in;" and she disappeared within the house. Reuben sat down on the piazza, in his quiet, undemonstrative way. Miss Warren came down and stood close to Mr. Yocomb's side, as if she half unconsciously sought the good man's protection. Incessant lightnings played from some portion of the cloud, zigzagging in fiery links and forkings, while, at brief intervals, there would be an exceptionally vivid flash, followed more and more closely by heavier and still heavier explosions. But not a leaf stirred around us: the chirp of a cricket was sharply distinct in the stillness. The stars shone serenely over our heads, and the moon, rising to the left out of the line of the smoke and fire, was assuming her silvery brightness, and at the same time rendering the burning mountain more lurid from contrast. "Herbert, Herbert, now I know how brave you were," I heard Miss Warren exclaim, in a low, awed tone. I saw by the frequent flashes that she was very pale, and that she was trembling. "You mean your brother," I said gently.