From the moment that the first thunder-bolt shot from the cloud, the countenance of the farmer was changed. He was manifestly alarmed in no ordinary degree; and when the flood came rushing from the dry mountains, and took away his sheep and his folds before his eyes, he became as a dead man, making no effort to save his store, or to give directions how it might be done. He ran away in a cowering posture, as he had been standing, and took shelter in a little green hollow, out of his servants' view. The thunder came nearer and nearer the place where the astonished hinds were, till at length they perceived the bolts of flame striking the earth around them, in every direction; at one time tearing up its bosom, and at another splintering the rocks. Robin Johnston, in describing it, said, that "the thunnerbolts came shimmering out o' the cludd sae thick, that they appeared to be linkit thegither, and fleeing in a' directions. There war some o' them blue, some o' them red, and some o' them like the colour o' the lowe of a candle; some o' them diving into the earth, and some o' them springing up out o' the earth and darting into the heaven." I cannot vouch for the truth of this, but I am sure my informer thought it true, or he would not have told it; and he said farther, that when old Maxwell saw it, he cried--"Fie, tak care, cubs o' hell! fie, tak care! cower laigh, and sit sicker; for your auld dam is aboon ye, and aneath ye, and a' round about ye. O for a good wat nurse to spean ye, like John Adamson's lambs! Ha, ha, ha!"--The lambs, it must be observed, had been turned out of the fold at first, and none of them perished with their dams. But just when the storm was at the height, and apparently passing the bounds ever witnessed in these northern climes; when the embroiled elements were in the state of hottest convulsion, and when our little pastoral group were every moment expecting the next to be their last, all at once a lovely "blue bore," fringed with downy gold, opened in the cloud behind, and in five minutes more the sun again appeared, and all was beauty and serenity. What a contrast to the scene so lately witnessed!