"The night was dark, and a rising tempest shook the tops of the lofty oaks: The distant lightning and the hollow voice of the thunder announced a dreadful night. The thunder soon began to shake the firmament, flashes of lightning illuminated, by intervals, the dark and dreary forest, and to increase the miseries of my situation, a storm of rain gushed down with such violence as if all the flood-gates of heaven had been opened at once. I sought shelter beneath an antient oak, but, alas! a flash of lightning which shivered to atoms a lofty beech tree, not above fifty paces from the spot where I was standing, made me soon quit my dangerous asylum, and drove me to an open spot where I was exposed to all the violence of the storm: I was soon wet to the skin; my teeth began to chatter, and all my little courage fled on the wings of despondency."
"I had stood the fury of the elements two horrid dreadful hours, no sound was heard"but
