On the same side of the street as the passage, in a neighbouring house, nine or ten yards away, in a ground-floor room of which the door was shut, a young woman was working at a sewing-machine. At the moment of the thunderclap, she experienced a violent shock throughout her whole body, and a fierce burning sensation in the hollow of her back. It was found afterwards that between the shoulder-blades and also on her leg, she had been badly scorched, but the wounds quickly healed. Now, in the room of this victim, no trace was to be found of the passing of the fireball, neither on the ceiling, nor on the floor, nor on the walls. There was absolutely nothing to show how the electric fluid could have made its way in from the spot in which the fireball had exploded in the neighbouring house, separated from it by two thick walls. Mysterious, is it not? The fireball seems to dwindle out of sight. In some cases, it seems to reduce itself into vapour in order to pass from one place to another. With animals these fireballs seem deadlier and more merciless than with human beings. Thus, on February 16, 1866, a thunderstorm descended upon a farm in the Commune of Chapelle-Largeau (Deux-Sèvres), and the circumstances attending its explosion are too remarkable to be overlooked. After a tremendous thunderclap, a young man who was standing near the farm saw an immense fireball touch the ground at his feet, but it did him no damage, but passed, still harmlessly, through a room in the farmhouse in which there were nine persons. The only effect it produced was the flaring up of some matches upon the chimney-piece. It proceeded towards the stables, which were divided into two compartments. In one there were two cows and two oxen: the first cow, to the right of the entrance, was killed, the second was uninjured; the first ox was killed, the second was uninjured. The same effect was found to have been produced in the other compartment, in which there were four cows; the first and the third were killed, the second and fourth were spared: the odd numbers taken and the even numbers left. Similar freaks have been recorded in connection with piles of plates struck by lightning--holes being found in alternate plates. How are these things to be explained? The following story is very extraordinary, though it does not help to clear up the mystery of lightning's strange ways:--