overspread the sky, yielding only to some level lines of light
where the sun went down. Perhaps our driver was looking toward
the sky more than to his own affairs, for, just as all this ended
a wheel gave out, and we had to stop in Portsmouth for repairs.
By the time we were again in motion, the changing wind had
brought up a final thunder-storm, which broke upon us ere we
reached our homes. It was rather an uncommon thing, so late in
the season; for the lightning, like other brilliant visitors,
usually appears in Oldport during only a month or two of every
year.

The coach set me down at my own door, so soaked that I might have
floated in. I peeped into Severance's room, however, on the way
to my own. Strange to say, no one was there; yet some one had
evidently been lying on the bed, and on the pillow lay the old
book on the Second Sight, open at the very page which had so
bewitched him and vexed me. I glanced at it mechanically, and
when I came to the meaningless jumble, "In thunder two," a flash
flooded the chamber, and a sudden fear struck into my mind. Who
knew what insane experiment might have come into that boy's head?

With sudden impulse, I went downstairs, and found the whole house
empty, until a stupid old woman, coming in from the wood-house
with her apron full of turnips, told me that Severance had been
missing since nightfall, after being for a week in bed,
dangerously ill, and sometimes slightly delirious. The family had
become alarmed,and were out with lanterns, in search of him.

It was safe to say that none of them had more reason to be
alarmed than I. It was something, however, to know where to seek