Yet he could not help wondering whether blundering kinsfolk made people blush in the next world.
"Holt on doo de last ent!" continued Gottlieb.

"It's pout goom! Kood pye, ole moon! You koes town, you nebber gooms pack no more already." This exhortation might have proceeded in this strain indefinitely, to the mortification of August and the amusement of the profane, had there not just at that moment broken upon the sultry stillness of the night one of those crescendo thunder-bursts, beginning in a distant rumble, and swelling out louder and still louder, until it ended with a tremendous detonation.

In the strange light of the setting moon, while everybody's attention was engrossed by the excitement, the swift oncoming of a thunder-cloud had not been observed by any but Andrew, and it had already climbed half-way to the zenith, blotting out a third of the firmament.

This inverted thunder-bolt produced a startling effect upon the over-strained nerves of the crowd.

Some cried out with terror, some sobbed with hysterical agony, some shouted in triumph, and it was generally believed that Virginia Waters, who died a maniac many years afterward, lost her reason at that moment.