40 CAROLINE.

Drops falling. Breezes. The lightning.

 

 

“ No,” said Caroline, “we should not have time to get
home; it is more than a mile. We must stay here till
the shower is over.”

So saying she held out her hand and felt some drops
fall wpon it.

“Ft is beginning now,’ said she.

She had scarcely spoken these words before they all
heard a sudden pattering of drops upon the trees of the
forest above and around them, and immediately after-
ward a gust of wind began to blow, exhibiting its effects,
first in the sudden waving of the branches of the trees all
about the place where the children were sitting, and then
by the ruffling and darkening of the surface of the pond,
as the breezes, coming down from the hills, went scud-
ding over the water.

“There is going to be a shower,’ said Caroline, “I
truly believe. But we have got a good shelter, and we
will stay in it till it is over.”

« And what shall we do then ?” said Malleville. “It
will be so wet everywhere that we cannot get home.”

“T don’t know what we shall do,” said Caroline, “we
will see.”

In the mean time the rain fell faster and faster, and the
distant peals of thunder became more frequent. At length
a flash of Lghtning was seen, and soon afterward a loud
crash was heard in the sky, at a little distance behind
where the children were sitting. Phonny said that he
expected it struck something.

“ Well,” said Caroline, “ if it did, it can’t strike us very
well, under all these rocks, that is a comfort.”

The lightning came much nearer to siriking them,
however, than they had imagined that it would. For