n 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. Milty Boulter 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 'portant 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.

"I only pulled six of them up," protested Davy. "I wanted to see if
there was grubs at the roots. Milty Boulter 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's 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 daintily up and
provoke us to admiration."

"Those Yellow Duchess trees always bear well," said Marilla
complacently. "That tree'll be loaded this year. I'm real glad. . .
they're great for pies."

But neither Marilla nor Anne nor anybody else was fated to make pies out
of Yellow Duchess apples that year.

The twenty-third of 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 Avonlea schoolroom. A hot
breeze blew all the forenoon; but after noon hour it died away into a
heavy stillness. At half past three Anne heard a low rumble of thunder.
She promptly dismissed school at once, so that the 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 Bell 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 and fringed
edges showed a ghastly, livid white. There was something about