Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the twenty-fourth chapter of Anne of Avonlea by Lucy Maud Montgomery.

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Welcome to Bite at a Time Books, where we read you your favorite classics.

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My name is Brie Carlyle and I love to read and wanted to share my passion with listeners like you.

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Today we'll be continuing anne of Aven Lee by Lucy Maud Montgomery, 24 a prophet in his own country.

1 May Day Avenley folks were mildly excited over some Avonlea notes signed observer, which appeared in the Charlottetown Daily Enterprise.

Gossip ascribed the authorship thereof to Charlie Sloan, partly because the said Charlie had indulged in similar literary flights in times past, and partly because one of the notes seemed to embody a sneer at Gilbert Blive.

Avenley juvenile society persisted in regarding Gilbert Blive.

And Charlie Sloan as rivals in the good graces of a certain damsel with gray eyes and an imagination.

Gossip, as usual, was wrong.

Gilbert Blive.

Aided and abetted by Anne, had written the notes, putting in the one about himself as a blind.

Only two of the notes had any bearing on this history.

Rumor has it that there will be a wedding in our village ere the daisies are in bloom.

A new and highly respected citizen will lead to the Him andeal Altar, one of our most popular ladies.

Uncle Abe, our wellknown weather prophet, predicts a violent storm of thunder and lightning for the evening of the 23 May, beginning at 07:00 sharp.

The area of the storm will extend over the greater part of the province.

People traveling that evening will do well to take umbrellas and Macintoshes with them.

Uncle Abe really has predicted a storm for some time this spring, said Gilbert.

But do you suppose Mr.

Harrison really does go to see Isabella Andrews?

No, said Anne, laughing.

I'm sure he only goes to play checkers with Mr.

Harrison Andrews, but Mrs.

Lynn says she knows Isabella Andrews must be going to get married.

She's in such good spirits this spring.

Poor old Uncle Abe felt rather indignant over the notes.

He suspected that observer was making fun of him.

He angrily denied having assigned any particular date for his storm, but nobody believed him.

Life in Avon Lee continued on in the smooth and even tenor of its way.

The planting was put in, the improver celebrated an Arbor Day.

Each improver set out or caused to be set out.

Five ornamental trees as the society now numbered 40 members.

This meant a total of 200 young trees.

Early oats greened over the red fields, apple orchards flung great blossoming arms about the farmhouses, and the Snow Queen adorned itself as a bride for her husband.

Anne liked to sleep with her window open and let the cherry fragrance blow over her face all night.

She thought it very poetical.

Marilla thought she was risking her life.

Thanksgiving should be celebrated in the spring, said Anne one evening to Marilla as they sat on the front door steps and listened to the silver sweet chorus of the frogs.

I think it would be ever so much better than having it in November when everything is dead or asleep.

Then you have to remember to be thankful.

But in May 1 simply can't help being thankful that they are alive.

If nothing else, I feel exactly as Eve must have felt in the Garden of Eden before the trouble began.

Is that grass in the hollow green or golden?

It seems to me, Marilla, that a pearl of a day like this, when the blossoms are out and the winds don't know where to blow from next for sheer crazy delight must be pretty near as good as heaven.

Marilla looked scandalized and glanced apprehensively around to make sure the twins were not within earshot.

They came around the corner of the house just then.

Ain't it an awful nicesmelling evening?

Asked Davy, sniffing delightedly as he swung a hoe in his grimy hands.

He had been working in his garden that spring.

Marilla, by way of turning Davy's passion for reveling in mud and clay into useful channels, had given him and Dora a small plot of ground for a garden.

Both had eagerly gone to work in a characteristic fashion.

Dora planted, weeded and watered carefully, systematically and dispassionately.

As a result, her plot was already green with prim, orderly little rows of vegetables and annuals.

Davy, however, worked with more zeal than discretion.

He dug and hoed and raked and watered and transplanted so energetically that his seeds had no chance for their lives.

How's your garden coming on, Davy boy?

Asked Anne.

Kind of slow, said Davy with a sigh.

I don't know why the things don't grow better.

Milte Bolter says I must have planted them in the dark of the moon, and that's the whole trouble.

He says you must never sow seeds or kill pork or cut your hair or do any important thing in the wrong time of the moon.

Is that true, Anne?

I want to know.

Maybe if you didn't pull your plants up by the roots every other day to see how they're getting on at the other end, they'd do better, said Marilla sarcastically.

He only pulled six of them up, protested Davy.

I wanted to see if there was grubs at the roots, Milty Bolter said.

If it wasn't the moon's fault, it must be grubs.

But I only found one grub.

He was a great big juicy curly grub.

I put him on a stone and got another stone and smashed him flat.

He made a jolly squish, I tell you.

I was sorry there wasn't more of them.

Dora's garden was planted same time as mine, and her things are growing all right.

It can't be the moon, Davy concluded in a reflective tone.

Marilla, look at that apple tree, said Anne.

Why, the thing is human.

It is reaching out long arms to pick its own pink skirts, dangerly up and provoke us to admiration.

Those yellow duchess trees always bear well, said Marilla complacently.

That tree will be loaded this year.

I'm real glad they're great for pies.

But neither Marilla nor Anne nor anybody else was faded to make pies out of yellow duchess apples that year.

The 23 May came an unseasonably warm day as none realized more keenly than Anne and her little beehive of pupils sweltering over fractions and syntax.

In the Avenley schoolroom, a hot breeze blew all before noon, but after noon hour it died away into a heavy stillness.

At 03:30, Anne heard a low rumble of thunder.

She promptly dismissed school at once so that children might get home before the storm came.

As they went out to the playground, anne perceived a certain shadow and gloom over the world in spite of the fact that the sun was still shining brightly.

Annetta Belle caught her hand nervously.

Oh, teacher, look at that awful cloud.

Anne looked and gave an exclamation of dismay.

In the northwest, a mass of cloud such as she had never in all her life beheld before was rapidly rolling up.

It was dead black, save where its curled infringed edges showed a ghastly livid white.

There was something about it, indescribably menacing as it gloomed up in the clear blue sky.

Now and again a bolt of lightning shot across it, followed by a savage growl.

It hung so low that it almost seemed to be touching the tops of the wooded hills.

Mr.

Harmon Andrews came clattering up the hill in his truck wagon.

Urging his team of grace to their utmost speed.

He pulled them to a halt opposite the school.

Guess Uncle Abes hit it for once in his life.

Anne, he shouted.

His storms come in a little ahead of time.

Did you ever see the like of that cloud?

Here, all you young ones that are going my way, pile in.

And those that ain't, scoot for the post office if you've mourned a quarter of a mile to go and stay there till the shower's over.

Anne caught Davey and Dora by the hands and flew down the hill along the birch path and passed Violet, Vale and Willowmir as fast as the twin's fat legs could go.

They reached Green Gables not a moment too soon and were joined at the door by Marilla, who had been hustling her ducks and chickens under shelter.

As they dashed into the kitchen, the light seemed to vanish, as if blown out by some mighty breath.

The awful cloud rolled over the sun, and a darkness, as of late twilight, fell across the world.

At the same moment.

With a crash of thunder and a blinding glare of lightning, the hail swooped down and blotted the landscape out in one white fury.

Through all the clamor of the storm came the foot of torn branches striking the house and the sharp crack of breaking glass.

In three minutes every pane in the western north windows was broken, and the hail poured in through the apertures, covering the floor with stones, the smallest of which was as big as a hen's egg.

For threequarters of an hour the storm raged unabated, and no one who underwent it ever forgot it.

Marla, for once in her life, shaken out of her composure by sheer terror, knelt by her rocking chair in a corner of the kitchen, gasping and sobbing between the deafening thunder peels.

Anne, white as paper, had dragged the sofa away from the window and sat on it with a twin on either side.

Davy, at the first crash, had held Anne.

Anne is at the judgment day.

Anne.

Anne.

I never meant to be naughty.

And then he buried his face in Anne's lap and kept it there, his little body quivering.

Dora, somewhat pale but quite composed, sat with her hand clasped in Anne's, quiet and motionless.

It is doubtful if an earthquake would have disturbed Dora.

Then, almost as suddenly as it began, the storm ceased.

The hail stopped, the thunder rolled and muttered away to the eastward, and the sun burst out merry and radiant over a world so changed that it seemed an absurd thing to think that a scant three quarters of an hour could have affected such a transformation.

Marilla rose from her knees, weak and trembling, and dropped on her rocker.

Her face was haggard, and she looked ten years older.

Have we all come out of that alive?

She asked solemnly.

You bet we have, piped Davy cheerfully.

Quite his own man again.

I wasn't a bit scared either, only just at the first it come on a fellow so sudden, I made up my mind quick as a wink that I wouldn't fight Teddy Sloan Monday as I'd promised.

But now maybe I will.

Say, Dora.

Were you scared?

Yes, I was a little scared, said Dora primly, but I held tight to Anne's hand and said my prayers over and over again.

Well, I'd have said my prayers too, if I'd have thought of it, said Davy.

But he added triumphantly, you see, I came through just as safe as you.

For all I didn't say them.

Anne got Marilla a glassful of her potent current wine.

How potent it was.

Anne, in her earlier days had had all too good reason to know.

And then they went to the door to look out on the strange scene.

Far and wide was a white carpet knee deep of hailstones.

Drifts of them were heaped up under the eaves and on the steps.

When, three or four days later, those hailstones melted, the havoc they had wrought was plainly seen, for every green growing thing in the field or garden was cut off.

Not only was every blossom stripped from the apple trees, but great boughs and branches were wrenched away, and out of the 200 trees set up by the improvers, by far the greater number were snapped off or torn to shreds.

Can it possibly be the same world it was an hour ago?

Asked Anne Daisyly.

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 you had come out all right.

Where none of us killed, said Marilla grimly, and none of the buildings was struck.

I hope you got off equally well.

Yes, not quite so well, ma'am.

We were struck.

The lightning knocked over the kitchen chimney and come down the flu and knocked over Ginger's cage and tore a hole in the floor and went into the cellar.

Yasam.

Was Ginger hurt?

Queried Anne?

Yes'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.

It was all the company I had, Anne, and now he's dead.

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.

Afanley 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 a road 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 waited 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.

Gilbert arrived at Green Gables in the evening and found Marilla and Anne Busily engaged in nailing strips of oil cloth over the broken windows.

Goodness only knows when we'll get glass for them, said Marilla.

Mr Barry went over to Carmody this afternoon, but not a pain could he get for love or money.

Lawson and Blair were cleaned out by the Carmody people by 10:00.

Was the storm bad at White Sands, Gilbert?

I should say so.

I was caught in the school with all the children and I thought some of them would go mad with fright.

Three of them fainted and two girls took Hysterics and Tommy Blue.

It did nothing but shriek at the top of his voice the whole time.

I only squealed once, said Davy proudly.

My garden was all smashed flat, he continued mournfully, but so was Dora's, he added in a tone which indicated that there was yet balm in Gilead.

Anne came running down from the west gable.

O, Gilbert, have you heard the news?

Mr Levi Bolter's old house was struck and burnt to the ground.

It seems to me that I'm dreadfully wicked to feel glad over that when so much damage has been done.

Mr Bolter says he believes the avis magicked up that storm on purpose.

Well, one thing is certain, said Gilbert laughing.

Observer has made Uncle Abe's reputation as a weather profit.

Uncle Abe's storm will go down in local history.

It is the most extraordinary coincidence that it should have come on the very day we selected.

I actually have a half guilty feeling as if I really had magicked it up.

We may as well rejoice over the old house being removed, for there's not much to rejoice over where our young trees are concerned.

Not ten of them have escaped.

Oh, well, we'll just have to plant them over again next spring, said Anne philosophically.

That is one good thing about this world.

There are always sure to be more springs.

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