All was
now explained to me; except that I could in no way account for this
wire, placed expressly to serve as a conductor for the lightning. It
seemed to be the work of magic. The evening was too far advanced for me
to distinguish how it was fastened, and what fixed it below; therefore,
enjoining Ernest to call loudly if he needed me, I hastened down. I saw
my three cooks very busy, as I passed through, preparing the broth for
their mother--they assured me it would be excellent. Fritz boasted that
he had killed the fowl with all speed, Jack that he had plucked it
without tearing it much, and Francis that he had lighted and kept up the
fire. They had nothing to employ them just then, and I took them with me
to have some one to talk to on the phenomenon of the lightning. Below
the window I found a large packet of iron wire, which I had brought from
Tent House some days before, intending on some leisure day to make a
sort of grating before our poultry-yard. By what chance was it here, and
hooked by one end to the roof of our house? Some time before I had
replaced our cloth canopy by a sort of roof covered with bark nailed
upon laths; the cloth still enclosed the sides and front; all was so
inflammable, that, but for the providential conductor, we must have been
in flames in an instant.
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