Si bene calculum ponas, ubique naufragium est.           —Petronius Arbiter¹.
 
     If you consider well the events of life, shipwreck² is
     everywhere.
After luncheon³ the doctor thought of returning home, when a rumbling⁴ of distant thunder made him pause. They reascended the Tower, to reconnoitre the elements from the library. The windows were so arranged as to afford a panoramic⁵ view.
 
The thunder muttered far off, but there was neither rain nor visible lightning.
 
'The storm is at a great distance,' said the doctor, 'and it seems to be passing away on the verge⁶ of the sky.'
 
But on the opposite horizon appeared a mass of dark-blue cloud, which rose rapidly, and advanced in the direct line of the Tower. Before it rolled a lighter⁷ but still lurid⁸ volume of vapour, which curled and wreathed like eddying⁹ smoke before the denser¹⁰ blackness of the unbroken cloud.
 
Simultaneously¹¹ followed the flashing of lightning, the rolling of thunder, and a deluge¹² of rain like the bursting of a waterspout.
 
They sate¹³ some time in silence, watching the storm as it swept along, with wind, and driving rain, and whirling hail, bringing for a time almost the darkness of night, through which the forked lightning poured a scarcely interrupted blaze.
 
Suddenly came a long dazzling flash, that seemed to irradiate the entire circumference¹⁴ of the sky, followed instantaneously by one of those crashing peals¹⁵ of thunder which always indicate that something very near has been struck by the lightning.
 
The doctor turned round to make a remark on the awful grandeur¹⁶ of the effect, when he observed that his young friend had disappeared. On his return, he said he had been looking for what had been struck.
 
'And what was?' said the doctor.
 
'Nothing in the house,' said his host.
 
'The Vestals,' thought the doctor; 'these were all his solicitude¹⁷.'
 
But though Mr. Falconer had looked no farther than to the safety of the seven sisters, his attention was soon drawn¹⁸ to a tumult¹⁹ below, which seemed to indicate that some serious mischief²⁰ had resulted from the lightning; and the youngest of the sisters, appearing in great trepidation²¹, informed him that one of two horses in a gentleman's carriage had been struck dead, and that a young lady in the carriage had been stunned²² by the passing flash, though how far she was injured by it could not be immediately known. The other horse, it appeared, had been prancing²³ in terror, and had nearly overthrown24

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