What a wild Paradise was here disclosed!--what a matchless picture, called into shape and colour with all the forceful ease and perfection of Nature's handiwork! No glimpse of human habitation was anywhere visible; man seemed to have found no dwelling here; there was nothing--nothing, but Earth the Beautiful, and her Lover the Sea! Over these twain the lightnings leaped, and the thunder played in the sanctuary of heaven,--this hour of storm was all their own, and humanity was no more counted in their passionate intermingling of life than the insects on a leaf, or the grains of sand on the shore.

For a moment or two Helmsley's eyes, straining and dim, gazed out on the marvellously bewitching landscape thus suddenly unrolled before him,--then all at once a sharp pain running through his heart caused him to flinch and tremble.

It was a keen stab of anguish, as though a knife had been plunged into his body.
"My God!" he muttered--"What--what is this ?" Walking feebly to a great stone hard by, he sat down upon it, breathing with difficulty.

The rain beat full upon him, but he did not heed it; he sought to recover from the shock of that horrible pain,--to overcome the creeping sick sensation of numbness which seemed to be slowly freezing him to death.

With a violent effort he tried to shake the illness off;--he looked up at the sky--and was met by a blinding flash which tore the clouds asunder and revealed a white blaze of palpitating fire in the centre of the blackness--and at this he made some inarticulate sound, putting both his hands before his face to hide the angry mass of flame.