arther west it, too, looked more massive now--more like a
rather solid wall. And all those soldier-clouds fell into a fan-shaped
formation--into lines radiating from that common central point in the
northwest. This arrangement I have for many years been calling
"the tree." It is quite common, of course, and I read it with great
confidence as meaning "no amount of rain or snow worth mentioning." "The
tree" covered half the heavens or more, and nowhere did I see any large
reaches of clear sky. Here and there a star would peep through, and
the moon seemed to be quickly and quietly moving through the lines.
Apparently he was the general who reviewed the army.

Again there came a shifting in the scenes. It looked as if some unseen
hands were spreading a sheet above these flocculent clouds--a thin and
vapoury sheet that came from the north and gradually covered the whole
roof of the sky. Stars and moon disappeared; but not, so far, the
light of the moon; it merely became diffused--the way the light from an
electric bulb becomes diffused when you enclose it in a frosted globe.
And then, as the sheet of vapour above began to thicken, the light on
the snow became dim and dimmer, till the whole of the landscape lay in
gloom. The sheet still seemed to be coming, coming from the north. But
no longer did it travel away to the south. It was as if it had brought
up against an obstacle there, as if it were being held in place. And
since there was more and more of it pressing up--it seemed rather to be
pushed now--it telescoped together and threw itself into folds, till
at last the whole sky looked like an enormous system of parallel
clothes-lines over all of which one great, soft, and loose cloth
were flung, so that fold after fold would hang down between all the
neighbouring pairs of lines; and between two folds there would be a
sharply converging, upward crease. It being night, this arrangement,
common in grey daylight, would not have shown at all, had it not been
for the moon above. As it was, every one of the infolds showed an
increasingly lighter grey the higher it folded up, and like huge, black
udders the outfolds were hanging down. This sky, when it persists,
I have often found to be followed within a few days by heavy storms.
To-night, however, it did not last. Shifting skies are never certain
signs, though they normally indicate an unsettled condition of the
atmosphere. I have observed them after a blizzard, too.

I looked b