Being left to myself, up there, I went on picking out old houses in thedistant town, and calling back their former inmates out of the moldy past.

Among them I presently recognized the house of the father of Lem Hackett(fictitious name). It carried me back more than a generation in a moment,and landed me in the midst of a time when the happenings of life were notthe natural and logical results of great general laws, but of special orders,and were freighted with very precise and distinct purposes--partly punitivein intent, partly admonitory; and usually local in application.

When I was a small boy, Lem Hackett was drowned--on a Sunday.

He fell out of an empty flat-boat, where he was playing.

Being loaded with sin, he went to the bottom like an anvil.

He was the only boy in the village who slept that night.

We others all lay awake, repenting. We had not needed the information,delivered from the pulpit that evening, that Lem's was a caseof special judgment--we knew that, already. There was a ferociousthunder-storm, that night, and it raged continuously until near dawn.

The winds blew, the windows rattled, the rain swept along the roofin pelting sheets, and at the briefest of intervals the inky blacknessof the night vanished, the houses over the way glared out whiteand blinding for a quivering instant, then the solid darkness shutdown again and a splitting peal of thunder followed, which seemedto rend everything in the neighborhood to shreds and splinters.

I sat up in bed quaking and shuddering, waiting for the destructionof the world, and expecting it. To me there was nothing strangeor incongruous in heaven's making such an uproar about Lem Hackett.

Apparently it was the right and proper thing to do.

Not a doubt entered my mind that all the angels were grouped together,discussing this boy's case and observing the awful bombardmentof our beggarly little village with satisfaction and approval.

There was one thing which disturbed me in the most serious way;that was the thought that this centering of the celestial intereston our village could not fail to attract the attention of the observersto people among us who might otherwise have escaped notice for years.

I felt that I was not only one of those people, but the very one mostlikely to be discovered. That discovery could have but one result:

I should be in the fire with Lem before the chill of the riverhad been fairly warmed out of him. I knew that this would beonly just and fair. I was increasing the chances against myselfall the time, by feeling a secret bitterness against Lem for havingattracted this fatal attention to me, but I could not help it--this sinful thought persisted in infesting my breast in spite of me.

Every time the lightning glared I caught my breath, and judged I was gone.

In my terror and misery, I meanly began to suggest other boys,and mention acts of theirs which were wickeder than mine, and peculiarlyneeded punishment--and I tried to pretend to myself that I was simplydoing this in a casual way, and without intent to divert the heavenlyattention to them for the purpose of getting rid of it myself.

With deep sagacity I put these mentions into the form of sorrowingrecollections and left-handed sham-supplications that the sins of thoseboys might be allowed to pass unnoticed--'Possibly they may repent.'

'It is true that Jim Smith broke a window and lied about it--but maybe he did not mean any harm. And although Tom Holmessays more bad words than any other boy in the village,he probably intends to repent--though he has never said he would.

And whilst it is a fact that John Jones did fish a littleon Sunday, once, he didn't really catch anything but only just onesmall useless mud-cat; and maybe that wouldn't have been so awfulif he had thrown it back--as he says he did, but he didn't. Pitybut they would repent of these dreadful things--and maybe they willyet.'

But while I was shamefully trying to draw attention to these poor chaps--who were doubtless directing the celestial attention to me at the same moment,though I never once suspected that--I had heedlessly left my candle burning.

It was not a time to neglect even trifling precautions. There was no occasionto add anything to the facilities for attracting notice to me--so I putthe light out.

It was a long night to me, and perhaps the most distressful one I ever spent.

I endured agonies of remorse for sins which I knew I had committed,and for others which I was not certain about, yet was sure that they hadbeen set down against me in a book by an angel who was wiser than I and didnot trust such important matters to memory. It struck me, by and by,that I had been making a most foolish and calamitous mistake, in one respect:

doubtless I had not only made my own destruction sure by directing attentionto those other boys, but had already accomplished theirs!--Doubtless thelightning had stretched them all dead in their beds by this time!

The anguish and the fright which this thought gave me made my previoussufferings seem trifling by comparison.

Things had become truly serious. I resolved to turn overa new leaf instantly; I also resolved to connect myselfwith the church the next day, if I survived to see itssun appear. I resolved to cease from sin in all its forms,and to lead a high and blameless life for ever after.

I would be punctual at church and Sunday-school; visit the sick;carry baskets of victuals to the poor (simply to fulfilthe regulation conditions, although I knew we had none among usso poor but they would smash the basket over my head for my pains);I would instruct other boys in right ways, and take the resultingtrouncings meekly; I would subsist entirely on tracts;I would invade the rum shop and warn the drunkard--and finally,if I escaped the fate of those who early become too good to live,I would go for a missionary.

The storm subsided toward daybreak, and I dozed gradually to sleepwith a sense of obligation to Lem Hackett for going to eternal sufferingin that abrupt way, and thus preventing a far more dreadful disaster--my own loss.

But when I rose refreshed, by and by, and found that those other boyswere still alive, I had a dim sense that perhaps the whole thingwas a false alarm; that the entire turmoil had been on Lem's accountand nobody's else. The world looked so bright and safe that theredid not seem to be any real occasion to turn over a new leaf.

I was a little subdued, during that day, and perhaps the next;after that, my purpose of reforming slowly dropped out of my mind,and I had a peaceful, comfortable time again, until the next storm.

That storm came about three weeks later; and it was the mostunaccountable one, to me, that I had ever experienced;for on the afternoon of that day, 'Dutchy' was drowned.

Dutchy belonged to our Sunday-school. He was a Germanlad who did not know enough to come in out of the rain;but he was exasperatingly good, and had a prodigious memory.

One Sunday he made himself the envy of all the youth and the talkof all the admiring village, by reciting three thousand verses ofScripture without missing a word; then he went off the very next dayand got drowned.

Circumstances gave to his death a peculiar impressiveness.

We were all bathing in a muddy creek which had a deep holein it, and in this hole the coopers had sunk a pile of greenhickory hoop poles to soak, some twelve feet under water.

We were diving and 'seeing who could stay under longest.'

We managed to remain down by holding on to the hoop poles.

Dutchy made such a poor success of it that he was hailed withlaughte............