“Can it possibly be the same world it was an hour ago?” asked Anne, dazedly.  “It must have taken longer than that to play such havoc.”

“The like of this has never been known in Prince Edward Island,” said Marilla, “never.  I remember when I was a girl there was a bad storm, but it was nothing to this.  We’ll hear of terrible destruction, you may be sure.”

“I do hope none of the children were caught out in it,” murmured Anne anxiously.  As it was discovered later, none of the children had been, since all those who had any distance to go had taken Mr. Andrews’ excellent advice and sought refuge at the post office.

“There comes John Henry Carter,” said Marilla.

John Henry came wading through the hailstones with a rather scared grin.

“Oh, ain’t this awful, Miss Cuthbert?  Mr. Harrison sent me over to see if yous had come out all right.”

“We’re none of us killed,” said Marilla grimly, “and none of the buildings was struck.  I hope you got off equally well.”

“Yas’m.  Not quite so well, ma’am.  We was struck.  The lightning knocked over the kitchen chimbly and come down the flue and knocked over Ginger’s cage and tore a hole in the floor and went into the sullar.  Yas’m.”

“Was Ginger hurt?” queried Anne.

“Yas’m.  He was hurt pretty bad.  He was killed.”  Later on Anne went over to comfort Mr. Harrison.  She found him sitting by the table, stroking Ginger’s gay dead body with a trembling hand.

“Poor Ginger won’t call you any more names, Anne,” he said mournfully.

Anne could never have imagined herself crying on Ginger’s account, but the tears came into her eyes.

“He was all the company I had, Anne . . . and now he’s dead.  Well, well, I’m an old fool to care so much.  I’ll let on I don’t care.  I know you’re going to say something sympathetic as soon as I stop talking . . . but don’t.  If you did I’d cry like a baby.  Hasn’t this been a terrible storm?  I guess folks won’t laugh at Uncle Abe’s predictions again.  Seems as if all the storms that he’s been prophesying all his life that never happened came all at once.  Beats all how he struck the very day though, don’t it?  Look at the mess we have here.  I must hustle round and get some boards to patch up that hole in the floor.”

Avonlea folks did nothing the next day but visit each other and compare damages.  The roads were impassable for wheels by reason of the hailstones, so they walked or rode on horseback.  The mail came late with ill tidings from all over the province.  Houses had been struck, people killed and injured; the whole telephone and telegraph system had been disorganized, and any number of young stock exposed in the fields had perished.

Uncle Abe waded out to the blacksmith’s forge early in the morning and spent the whole day there.  It was Uncle Abe’s hour of triumph and he enjoyed it to the full.  It would be doing Uncle Abe an injustice to say that he was glad the storm had happened; but since it had to be he was very glad he had predicted it . . . to the very day, too.  Uncle Abe forgot that he had ever denied setting the day.  As for the trifling discrepancy in the hour, that was nothing.