and made momentary riot. But farm-work has to get itself done
through fair or foul. It grew dark, the sheep were folded and fed, the
cattle were got in, and the family sat together in the kitchen,
silent, preoccupied, the men oppressed and anxious over they knew not
what. As for those two aliens, Miranda King and Mabilla By-the-Wood,
whatever they knew, one of them made no sign at all, and the other,
though she was white, though she shivered and peered about, had no
means of voicing her thought.

They had their tea and settled to their evening tasks. The old
shepherd dozed over his pipe, Miranda knitted fast, Mabilla stared out
of the window into the dark, twisting her hands, and Andrew, with one
of his hands upon her shoulder, patted her gently, as if to soothe
her. She gave him a grateful look more than once, but did not cease to
shiver. Nobody spoke, and suddenly in the silence Mabilla gasped and
began to tremble. Then the dog growled under the table. All looked up
and about them.

A scattering, pattering sound lashed at the window. Andrew then
started up. "Rain!" he said; "that's what we're waiting for," and made
to go to the door. Miranda his mother, and Mabilla his young wife,
caught him by the frock and held him back. The dog, staring into the
window-pane, bristling and glaring, continued to growl. They waited in
silence, but with beating hearts.

A loud knock sounded suddenly on the door--a dull, heavy blow, as if
one had pounded it with a tree-stump. The dog burst into a panic of
barking, flew to the door and sniffed at the threshold. He whined and
scratched frantically with his forepaws. The wind began to blow,
coming quite suddenly down, solid upon the wall of the house, shaking
it upon its foundations. George King was now upon his feet. "Good God
Almighty!" he said, "this is the end of the world!"

The blast was not long-lived. It fell to a murmur. Andrew King, now at
the window, could see nothing of the rain. There were no drops upon
the glass, nor sound upon the sycamores outside. But even while he
looked, and his grandfather, all his senses alert, waited for what was
to come, and the two pale women clung together, knowing what was to
come, there grew gradually another sound which, because it was
familiar, brought their terrors sharply to a point.

It was the sound of sheep in a flock running. It came from afar and
grew in volume and distinctness; the innumerable small thudding of
sharp hoofs, the r