The first flash was blinding, but before they had instinctively put their hands up to their eyes they had seen every twig of the skeleton trees outlined against the background of fire--they had seen the black bulk of the rocking-stone, and for the first time they noticed that it had the semblance of a huge hungry beast crouching for a leap. The thunder that followed seemed to set the world shaking with the sway of the rocking-stone when someone had put it in motion. “Is it true?--is it, indeed, true?” cried the girl between the peals of thunder. He felt her hands tighten upon his arm. “The Rock of Ages is true,” he said; but the second peal swallowed up his words. He heard her voice when the next flash made a cleft in the cloud: “Is it true--the prophecy--has it come?” Then he knew what was in her mind. “Do you fear it?” he cried, and he turned his face toward her. Another flaring sword made its stroke from the heavens, and by its blaze he saw that she was smiling while she shook her head. He knew that she had no fear. Across his own mind there had flashed the same thought that had come to her, taking the form of the question which she had put to him: “Is the prophecy about to be realised?” He felt perfectly tranquil in the midst of the storm; and the reflection that the tranquillity of the girl was due to his influence was sweet to him. The roar of the thunder had become almost continuous. They seemed to be the centre of a circle of livid flame. The intervals of darkness were less numerous than those during which the whole sky became illuminated. The floods came rather more fitfully. For a few minutes at a time it seemed as if an ocean had been displaced, as if an ocean had been suspended above them, and then suddenly dropped with the crash of a waterfall. Immediately afterward there would be a complete cessation of rain and the crash of waters. The thunder sounded very lonely. More than once there were intervals of sudden clearness in the air. For minutes at a time they could see, even after the blinding flash of a javelin of lightning, every object outside their sheltering place; then suddenly all would be blotted out. At such moments it seemed as if the blackness above them was solid--a vast mountain of unhewn marble falling down upon them. They had the impression of feeling the awful weight of its mass beginning to crush them. They became breathless--gasping. Once a flash fell close to them, and there was a noise of splintering wood and the hiss of water into which a red-hot bar has been dipped. A second afterward a blazing brand was flung in front of them, and the smoke hung dense in the heavy air. By the light that was cast around they saw that one of the trees growing on the little mound close to them had been struck and hurled where it lay.