But ere the words had well escaped me, another exclamation escaped him.

‘Crash! only three pulses—less than a third of a mile off—yonder, somewhere in that wood. I passed three stricken oaks there, ripped out new and glittering. The oak draws lightning more than other timber, having iron in solution in its sap. Your floor here seems oak.’

‘Heart-of-oak. From the peculiar time of your call upon me, I suppose you purposely select stormy weather for your journeys. When the thunder is roaring, you deem it an hour peculiarly favourable for producing impressions favourable to your trade.’

‘Hark!—Awful!’

‘For one who would arm others with fearlessness, you seem unbeseemingly timorous yourself. Common men choose fair weather for their travels: you choose thunderstorms; and yet—’

‘That I travel in thunderstorms, I grant; but not without particular precautions, such as only a lightning-rod man may know. Hark! Quick—look at my specimen rod. Only one dollar a foot.’

‘A very fine rod, I dare say. But what are these particular precautions of yours? Yet first let me close yonder shutters; the slanting rain is beating through the sash. I will bar up.’

‘Are you mad? Know you not that yon iron bar is a swift conductor? Desist.’

‘I will simply close the shutters, then, and call my boy to bring me a wooden bar. Pray, touch the bell- pull there.’

‘Are you frantic? That bell-wire might blast you. Never touch bell-wire in a thunderstorm, nor ring a bell of any sort.’

‘Nor those in belfries? Pray, will you tell me where and how one may be safe in a time like this? Is there any part of my house I may touch with hopes of my life?’

‘There is; but not where you now stand. Come away from the wall. The current will sometimes run down a wall, and—a man being a better conductor than a wall—it would leave the wall and run into him. Swoop! that must have fallen very nigh. That must have been globular lightning.’

‘Very probably. Tell me at once which is, in your opinion, the safest part of this house?’

‘This room, and this one spot in it where I stand. Come hither.’

‘The reasons first.’

‘Hark!—after the flash, the gust—the sashes shiver—the house, the house!—Come hither to me!’

‘The reasons, if you please.’

‘Come hither to me!’

‘Thank you again, I think I will try my old stand—the hearth. And now, Mr Lightning-Rod-Man, in the pauses of the thunder, be so good as to tell me your reasons for esteeming this one room of the house the safest, and your own one standpoint there the safest spot in it.’

There was now a little cessation of the storm for a while. The lightning-rod man seemed relieved, and replied: ‘Your house is a one-storeyed house, with an attic and a cellar; this room is between. Hence its comparative safety. Because lightning sometimes passes from the clouds to the earth, and sometimes from the earth to the clouds. Do you comprehend?—and I choose the middle of the room, because, if