THE GRANDMOTHER'S SHOE.
to give some orders, and the next instant several vivid flashes of lightning seemed to dash across our faces. 'There,' she said, when the thunder which followed them ceased, 'dost thou see how quiet Sophia is? She is not afraid.'
'I am not afraid of the storm,' I replied; and I asked her if I might go up to my own room.
She gave me leave, and I moved up stairs to the little chamber. I remember something of the terrible dimness which seemed to have gathered in an instant; and of the glowing heat that appeared to strike against me as from the door of an oven. But sister's remark that God was in the storm, was paramount to everything else, and before the thought of safety came the necessity to ask forgiveness.
Let no one say my fault was a trifling one; it was the same which had cost my first mother her place in Paradise. I had eaten forbidden fruit; and as I knelt at the foot of the bed and hid my face, I remembered what sister had said on this subject, and how I had despised her advice to keep away from temptation.
Again, there rushed over my heart the sudden comprehension of the nearness of God. In my childish thought I felt His presence so close to me, that I did not need to pray aloud; but as well as I could I entreated forgiveness, though the deafening peals of thunder seemed to drown my words, and confuse my very thoughts and senses. The floor shook under me, and I heard the furniture rattle and reel; but God, I knew, was in the storm, and gradually, as I prayed to Him, His near presence, which had been so terrible
