in some way what in other climates is
called earthquake weather, when Nature seems to be throwing a veil over
the world to hide the monstrous deed she is about to commit.

Those whose lives were happy, drawing their breath with a sense of
oppression, imagined impending trouble, while those with real tragedies
to bear now found them almost insupportable.

Early in the day, St. George's Hall looked down from its lofty ridge
upon basins of mist that presented the appearance of white lakes in the
meadows below. Gradually the tide rose above the long, low hall, until
the towers seemed to rest on clouds. Finally the whole mass
disappeared, to loom up larger than reality to the eyes of one
approaching from the city. As night came on, the lights from the
windows cut lurid pathways into the surrounding obscurity. A gradual
chill crept along the ground, thinning the fog and disclosing at
intervals ghostly glimmerings of the moon.

Through this strange medium two figures were toiling up the street that
flanked the northern limit of the campus. Under normal conditions, the
second could easily have seen the one in advance, but now his view was
obstructed, and though he gained rapidly, he had reached the entrance
of the maple walk before the mist in front of him seemed to concentrate
into a flitting shadow that resembled a woman's form. The young
astronomer had been wandering for hours in a vain search for diversion,
and the vision before him, embodying as it did the subject upon which
his mind had been concentrated, caused him to stand still in a tumult
of emotion. The next moment it was gone, and he believed that he had
been visited by an hallucination. Recently, that earlier picture of
Felicity beside the lamp had given place in his imagination to one
associated with a deeper experience. He had just pictured her in her
scarlet cloak and hood; then he had looked up to see the same figure
vanishing before his eyes.

A moment's reflection convinced him of the psychic nature of the
phenomenon. In all the range of human probabilities, what errand could
lead her at ten o'clock on such a night to that lonely hilltop, and on
down the road into the country beyond? It was manifest that his own
mind had shaped the vision from the pale vapours, and he realised how
weary and overwrought he had become. His sensation was now almost one
of fear, as if he had seen the ghost of a loved one rising out of the
mists of a remote and pa