One summer evening, the family party at Eskhall were seated in their comfortable drawing-room, engaged in that cheerful, affectionate conversation which forms the peculiar charm of a well-educated, well-regulated family circle. The day had been one of the most sultry and oppressive of the season; but the clouds, which gathered round the setting sun in dark and gloomy masses, seemed as if waiting in sullen silence for his disappearance, to pour their fury upon the scenes to which his rays had given beauty. Nor did they threaten in vain; all the wrathful energies of nature seemed to have awakened at the very hour when man and beast were about to seek repose. The rain descended in torrents, and poured forth, more like a continued stream than a collection of single drops. The vivid forked lightning appeared, in its ragged and eccentric course, to tear asunder the veil of darkness, only to render it doubly visible, while, glancing ten thousand reflections from the falling rain-drops, it flashed across the eyes of the family party, startling and dazzling them with its sudden and excessive brilliancy. The children clung to their grandfather in mute and breathless awe, and the whole party sat in silence, uninterrupted, save by involuntary ejaculations, which escaped them at each successive flash. Not a breath of wind was stirring, not a sound was to be heard, but the dull, monotonous, incessant pattering of the rain, and the loud, clear, crackling burst of the thunder, as it rolled peal after peal over their heads, and apparently in dangerous proximity. At length, the rain began to relax in its violence, the flashes of lightning became less and less vivid, and the thunder died away in faint and distant murmurings.
"Grandfather!" said little Gavin, leaving his stronghold between Douglas's knees, "was not that an awful storm?"
"Yes, my boy," replied the old man; "awful, indeed! and thankful ought we to be to the good Providence which has blessed us with a roof to shelter us, while many an uncovered head has been exposed to its violence. Such a night as this ought to awaken in us a spirit of gratitude for the blessings we ourselves enjoy, and of charity towards the wants of others."