in sheets by the time I reached Mrs. Hathaway's gate. It seemed almost to beat me down to the ground, and the water was over my shoes in half a minute. The lightning seemed like one long flash, and the thunder never stopped. I staggered on and floundered on, and slipped down and got up again, all the time just saying to myself, 'The baby! the baby!—if I could only reach him and find him alive!'

"Then it seemed as if night came down all at once. It got dark in one minute, and I heard a horrible roaring sound behind me—louder than all the thunder. I heard a long, rattling crash, and then another. It was Mrs. Hathaway's house and barn going to pieces, but I didn't know it then. I heard people scream; I heard all sorts of things whizzing about me, but it was too dark to see much. Things came striking against me, and soon a heavy thing came banging against me on one side, and just as I was falling down something seemed to pick me up, and I was whirled and twisted round and round, till I didn't know anything more.

"When I opened my eyes the rain was falling on my face. It was lighter, and I saw boards and timbers, and trees and branches and bushes, lying all about me. I was in a field not far from home. I felt dizzy, and didn't remember anything at first, and then I thought of little Harry, and sprang up to run to him. But, oh, how sick and sore I felt! When I tried to lift a heavy branch which was lying partly over me, I could raise only one of my arms.

"But my feet were all right, and I ran as fast as I could toward home. I saw my father in the road in front of the house, looking up and down, with a white, frightened face. He hurried toward me.

"'Where have you been, child?' he said. 'I must go to see if anything has happened to your mother, but I could not go till I knew you and Harry were safe— Why, dear, you are hurt!'

"But I ran past him, crying, 'The baby, father, he's in the hammock—come quick!'

"When we got round to the grove I screamed at what I saw. The trees lay about as if a scythe had mown them down. I hardly knew the place, or where to look for Harry.

"One of the trees the hammock was tied to was lying exactly where I had left my little brother. Another tree was blown right across it. Father did not stop to look, but called the hired man, and they brought axes and saws. I stooped down and listened, though I felt sure the dear little one must be dead. But I heard a sad little sob, as if he had cried till he was worn out. I was so glad, I got up and danced. But father shook his head and said, 'He's alive, but how do we know how he may be hurt.' They chopped away at the branches, while I held my breath, oh, how long, long it seemed to wait! I crouched down and crept as near the baby as I could. I called to him, and he gave a pitiful little cry; he expected me to take him at once, and I was glad he got angry because he had to wait. He tried to free himself from the hammock, and I began to hope he might not be much hurt.

"At last a great branch was taken away, and I got closer to him. I called father, and we looked under, and I heard him say, 'Thank God!'

"There the darling was, in a kind of little bower made by two big branches which came down on each side of him. They had saved him when the other tree fell. His forehead was scratched deeply, but nothing else ailed him. Father reached in and cut away the hammock with his knife, and drew him out with hands that shook as if he had an ague fit. The little fellow held out his arms to me; but as I tried to take him my strength all seemed to go away. I grew dizzy, and fell down. Bridget took the child, and father carried me in and laid me on a bed.

"Then he and Bridget tried to get us into dry clothes. But I cried out every time they touched me, till father was nearly at his wits' end. I called aloud for mother. I knew she would not hurt me so.

"'I will go now and see where she is, dear,' father said at last, wiping his forehead. 'The good Lord only knows where she may be—and the little ones. I'll bring some one to help you, poor child.'

"The sun was shining brightly again by this time, but as I lay there, with a great deal of pain in my arm and head, I seemed to feel that black storm coming after me yet. The roar, roar, roar kept on in my head, and the bed was whirling up in the clouds with me, and Mary Hathaway was holding me, while some one pelted me with the stars; and mother said, 'Oh, my poor darling—look at her head!'

"Then the moon peeped at me, and said, 'Her arm is broken in two places.'

"It was the doctor who said this, and mother had really come to me. After that I seemed to be climbing and climbing through trees—oh, so long! I kept on for years, always hunting for little Harry, hearing him cry for me, and never able to reach him. But at last I saw a light—I had been in the dark all the time—and I struggled toward it, and looked out. Mother was there, but not Harry.

"'Where is he?' I cried.

"'Who, dear?' she said.

"'Why, the baby—little Harry,' I said. 'I was almost up to him.'

"'Here he is.'

"She lifted him up to me, and I tried to take him, but I could not raise myself, and was glad to find that I was in my own bed. I went off into a long sleep, and when I awoke I didn't want anything except to lie quiet and know mother was caring for me, and that Harry sometimes came toddling into my room, for he had learned to walk during the long weeks I had been sick.

"Well, that is about all there is of it. My arm was a long time getting well, and will always be crooked, like this. The doctor said it would have got entirely well if it had not been for the fever.

"But, dear me, how much thinking I did when my head got clear enough to think! When I was out in the storm all I had ever heard about the wrath of God on the children of disobedience seemed to come back to me. How I was punished! If I had been faithful to my duty, I should have been safe at home when the storm came. I shall always feel as if I knew something of that awful wrath, for wasn't I taken up in God's terrible hand?

"When I was getting well I began to wonder why Mary Hathaway never came to see me. Mother put off telling me as long as she could that she and a younger sister had been killed in a moment by the falling of their house, and that Mrs. Hathaway was crippled for life. None of us had been hurt but me. Mother had got beyond the track of the worst part of the storm, but her horse was killed by the lightning. Father lost his barns, most of his stock, and nearly all his crops.

"That's the story of the terrible tornado. Its path was not more than half a mile wide, and it was all over in less than half an hour. Mother says I grew five years older on that day, and I think she is right."

"MOONSHINERS."

BY E. H. MILLER.

Chapter I.

CONNY LOSES HIS FATHER.

Dr. Hunter was riding leisurely on his morning rounds among the few people who managed to be sick at Dunsmore in spite of the clear sweet air that carried the balmy scent of the forests into all its pleasant valleys. Under the seat of his sulky was his little old-fashioned box of medicines, and close at his hand a tin box containing what was in the doctor's eyes quite as valuable—a specimen of a rare plant which he had discovered in a cleft of gray rock, and secured at the cost of some pretty hard climbing. The road upon which he was driving wound along the mountain-side, and he could look down upon the tops of the trees below, noting here and there the scattered buildings and stacks of feed that marked some little farm in a clearing, and from the very densest spot of all a faint thread of blue smoke rising above the trees. He had often noticed it, and more than once had asked about it, but no one gave him any satisfactory answer. You would have supposed that