Mr. James Moir of Saroch, Scotland, relates an equally strange personal experience, possibly connected with the electrical condition of the atmosphere. “In February, 1882,” he says, “this part of Scotland was visited by a furious gale of wind, rain, sleet, and hail. The gale subsided considerably about five o’clock in the afternoon. At eight o’clock the sky was fairly clear, when a black cloud sprang up in the north, and the night became suddenly intensely dark. With the darkness came a tremendous shower of hail. All at once I was startled by a vivid flash of lightning close at hand, but without thunder. At the same instant I found myself enveloped in a sheet of pale, flickering, white light. It seemed to proceed from every part of my clothes, especially on the side least exposed to the hail; and more particularly and brightly from my arm, shoulder, and head. Though I turned about pretty smartly, and shifted my position, I found it impossible to shake off the flickering flames. When I walked on they continued with me for two or three minutes, disappearing only when the violence of the blast was somewhat diminished. I felt no unusual sensation beyond the stinging of the hail, and no sound except that of the storm.” The adventures of John Stewart, who for many years drove a mail-gig between Dunkeld and Aberfeldy, Scotland, as given by an English paper, are well worth recording. On an extremely dark night, he and another man, climbing a rocky, heathery height in Rannock, were all at once set on flames by some mysterious fire, which appeared to proceed from the heather which they were traversing; and the more they tried to rub the flames off, the more tenaciously they seemed to adhere, and the more the fire increased in brightness and magnitude. Moreover, the long heather, agitated by their feet, emitted streams of burning vapor; and for the space of a few minutes they were in the greatest consternation. They believed that they barely escaped a living cremation. Of course their liberal share of native superstition, and the gloom of the night in the weird wilderness remote from human habitation, rendered their position the more alarming. A wonderful phenomenon is noted by a gentleman living in Cheltenham, England. He was returning from Great Yarmouth to his house, a distance of three miles, and took the road of the Denes, intending to cross by the lower ferry. Before reaching it, a dark cloud coming from the south-east, off the sea, suddenly surprised him, and drenched him with rain. He jumped into the boat, and when the boatman had pushed off, he remarked that every drop of rain hanging from his hair, beard, and clothes was luminous with white light, well seen, as it was very dark at the time. He afterwards learned that the same appearance had been observed by several pilots exposed to the same shower, and he attributed the occurrence to a species of St. Elmo’s fire. CHAPTER XVI.