She had stood in it only the other day, penned from
outsiders' view by the judge's outstretched arms. Then, she had no
mind for bygone horrors, her own tragedy weighed too heavily upon
her; but to-night, as she gazed, fascinated, anxious to forget
herself, anxious to indulge in any thought which would relieve her
from dwelling on the question she must settle before she slept,
she allowed her wonder and her revulsion to have free course.
Instead of ignoring, she would recall the story of the place as it
had been told her when she first came to settle in its
neighbourhood.
Spencer's Folly! Well, it had been that, and Spencer's den of
dissipation too! There were great tales--but it was not of these
she was thinking, but of the night of storm--(of the greatest
storm of which any record remained in Shelby) when the wind tore
down branches and toppled down chimneys; when cattle were smitten
in the field and men on the highway; when the old bridge, since
replaced, buckled up and sank in the roaring flood it could no
longer span, and the bluff towering overhead, flared into flame,
and the house which was its glory, was smitten apart by the
descending bolt as by a Titan sword, and blazed like a beacon to
the sky.
This was long before she herself had come to Shelby; but she had
been told the story so often that it was quite as vivid to her as
if she had been one of the innumerable men and women who had
crowded the glistening, swimming streets to view this spectacle of
destruction.
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