No. A broad, flickering riband of light ineffable wavered for an instant of time before his eyes, lighting up the country far and wide; but plainly visible between him and the blaze was a tall, dark, bare-headed woman, wildly raising her hands above her head, as if imploring vengeance upon him, and, ere the terrible explosion which followed had ceased to shake the old house to its foundations, he shut the door, and went muttering alone up to his solitary chamber. The next morning the groom came into the lawyer's room, and informed him that when he went to call his master in the morning, he had found the bed untouched, and Hawker sitting half undressed in his arm-chair, dead and cold. Chapter XIV THE MAJOR'S VISIT TO THE "NAG'S-HEAD." Major Buckley and his wife stood together in the verandah of their cottage, watching the storm. All the afternoon they had seen it creeping higher and higher, blacker and more threatening up the eastern heavens, until it grew painful to wait any longer for its approach. But now that it had burst on them, and night had come on dark as pitch, they felt the pleasant change in the atmosphere, and, in spite of the continuous gleam of the lightning, and the eternal roll and crackle of the thunder, they had come out to see the beauty and majesty of the tempest. They stood with their arms entwined for some time, in silence; but after a crash louder than any of those which had preceded it, Major Buckley said:-- "My dearest Agnes, you are very courageous in a thunderstorm." "Why not, James?" she said; "you cannot avoid the lightning, and the thunder won't harm you. Most women fear the sound of the thunder more than anything, but I suspect that Ciudad Rodrigo made more noise than this, husband?" "It did indeed, my dear. More noise than I ever heard in any storm yet. It is coming nearer." "I am afraid it will shake the poor Vicar very much," said Mrs. Buckley. "Ah, there is Sam, crying." They both went into the sitting-room; little Sam had petitioned to go to bed on the sofa till the storm was over, and now, awakened by the thunder, was sitting up in his bed, crying out for his mother. The Major went in and lay down by the child on the sofa, to quiet him. "What!" said he, "Sammy, you're not afraid of thunder, are you?" "Yes! I am," said the child; "very much indeed. I am glad you are come, father." "Lightning never strikes good boys, Sam," said the Major. "Are you sure of that, father?" said the little one. That was a poser; so the Major thought it best to counterfeit sleep; but he overdid it, and snored so loud, that the boy began to laugh, and his father had to practise his deception with less noise. And by degrees, the little hand that held his moustache dropped feebly on the bedclothes, and the Major, ascertaining by the child's regular breathing that his son was asleep, gently raised his vast length, and proposed to his wife to come into the verandah again.