Gramp called us in, to carry a few cocks of late-made hay into the barn from the orchard, and then bade us shut all the barn doors and make things snug. "For there's a tremendous shower coming, boys," he said. "There's hail in those clouds." We ran to do as he advised, and had no more than taken these precautions when the shower struck. Such awful thunder and such bright, vengeful lightning had, the people of the vicinity declared, never been observed in that town, previously. A bolt came down one of the large Balm o' Gilead trees near the house, and the thunder peal was absolutely deafening. Wealthy hid herself in the parlor clothes-closet, and Gram sat with her hands folded in the middle of the sitting-room. Just before the clouds burst, it was so dark in the house that we could scarcely see each others' faces. A moment later the lightning struck a large butternut tree near the calf-pasture wall, across the south field, shivering it so completely that nearly all the top fell; the trunk, too, was split open from the heart. In fact, the terrific flashes and peals indicated that the lightning was descending to the earth all about us. Two barns were struck and burned in the school district adjoining ours. Rain then fell in sheets, and also hail, which cut the garden vegetables to strings and broke a number of windows. This tempest lasted for nearly an hour, and prostrated the corn and standing grain very badly. An apple tree was also up-rooted, for there was violent wind as well as lightning and thunder. Next morning we were obliged to leave our farm work and repair the roads throughout that highway district, for the shower had gullied the hills almost beyond belief. Altogether it had done a great amount of damage on every hand. At supper that night, after returning from work on the highway, the Old Squire suddenly asked whether any of us had seen the colts, in the pasture beyond the west field, that day. No one remembered having seen them since the shower, though we generally noticed them running around the pasture every day. There were three of them, two bays and a black one. The two former were the property of men in the village, but Black Hawk, as we called him, belonged to us. "After supper, you had better go see where they are," the Old Squire said to us. Addison and I set off accordingly. The pasture was partly cleared, with here and there a pine stub left standing, and was of about twenty acres extent. We went up across it to the top of the hill, but could not find the colts. Then we walked around by the farther fence, but discovered no breach in it and no traces where truant hoofs had jumped over it. It was growing dark, and we at length went home to report our ill-success. "Strange!" the Old Squire said. "We must look them up." But no further search was made that night.