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It has been said the weather for weeks was unusually brilliant, days of

cloudless sunshine, nights of cloudless h for the ust in the tropics But nohile they looked, a vivid flash of lightning, from what quarter of

the heavens no man knew, shot athwart the sky, followed by another and

another, quick, sharp, and blinding Then one great drop of rain fell

like molten lead on the pavement, then a second and a third quicker,

faster, and thicker, until down it crashed in a perfect deluge It did

not wait to rain; it fell in floods--in great, slanting sheets of water,

an if the very floodgates of heaven had opened for a second deluge No

one ever remembered to have seen such torrents fall, and the populace

fled before it in wildest dismay In five minutes, every fire, from one

extremity of London to the other, was quenched in the very blackness

of darkness, and on that night the deepest gloohout the city It was clear the hand of an avenging Deity was in

this, and He who had rained down fire on Sodoht In fifteen minutes the terrific flood was over; the dismal

clouds cleared away, a pale, fair, silver moon shone serenely out, and

looked down on the black, charred heaps of ashes strewn through the

streets of London One by one, the stars that all night had been

obscured, glanced and sparkled over the sky, and lit up with their soft,