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"PRESENTLY THE STORM HAD CEASED, ORDER WAS RESTORED."

storms-I would hear the tempest of wings of these myriads in their kite-shaped flights following their leader and his honking "taps." They would come lower and seem to pause as they came over the hill, but catching sight of the blue waters beneath from their blue ether above, nothing would deter them and with a happy clamor they would settle on the lake. I often wished they would stop and that they could tell me of their travels. No lonely exile held these busy birds of long pilgrimages. They might have brought me news from far away Alberta or a message from the sunny orange groves in California.

Thus it happened that often during the day I had grown accustomed to glance from my kitchen window towards the giant perch to see what new "moving picture" it had to show me to-day. So when that day the black thunder-cloud approached, quite naturally my eyes upturned towards that old tree and well was I repaid that time, for quickly came a vivid chain of lightning across the black cloud as a background which became livid with it. It struck the fir tree derelict at its very pointed tip, then down, down the zigzag lightning played, stripping all the perches off and throwing wood and bark out into the highway far below; but even then this fateful tree was spared for suddenly towards the center of that towering trunk the capricious lightning glanced, and leaping, played another tree; and we stood there speechless and appalled. I have never seen a more vivid lightning picture! Boyd,

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terror-stricken, clung to my skirts and cried: Am I dead, mother, am I dead?" Poor child! Well might it have frightened an older one. We went on harnessing unexcited "Buck" who was not in the least bit phased by the tempest raging round. We stood and watched the dreadful sight and sound disappearing over the lake. The storm had lashed its waters into the semblance of a larger body of water and waves with pretty white mull slumber-caps were dancing on its surface. The waves hitting the stony beach had a familiar rhythm and closing my eyes I could see Lake Erie and was waiting for that "big seventh one " to come so I could jump it. All our boats were being lashed against the swinging, swaying dock, all pulling and jerking at their ropes as if they, animate, felt the call of the storm and the wild and must get out into the center of the disturbance, even though it might end in their destruction, like a human soul pulled between the call of conscience and the heart's desire. Presently the storm had ceased. Order was restored. We went on down to the store to buy our chicken feed. If the lightning had struck " Buck' I don't believe he would have budged from his meditative amble and his calmness loaned courage to our fears. This thunder-storm seemed to herald in that rainy season of 1908 and with the opening of the schools I found myself confronted by a new, most serious problem.

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"I always tried to be near the schoolhouse at the time the trains came into the town the other side of the schoolhouse and I watched all strangers who arrived."

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