dry cold, the inhabitants of the district felt a curious
heaviness in their limbs. There was no air stirring. The people looked
at one another as if each were asking the other if he too felt the
same uneasiness. Odd prophecies of war, sickness and famine went from
mouth to mouth. The more intelligent smiled, but were themselves
unable to refrain from clothing their inward gloom in corresponding
pictures of some impending disaster. All day long dark clouds, of
different form and color from what the wintry sky is accustomed to
display, had been gathering. Their blackness would have been in
unbearably glaring contrast to the snow which covered mountains and
valley and hung like candied sugar on the leafless boughs, if their
dark reflection had not somewhat deadened the dazzling splendor. Here
and there the firm outline of the cloud-castles softened and seemed to
hang down over earth like drooping breasts. These bore more nearly the
aspect of ordinary snow-clouds, and their dull reddish gray served to
unite the leaden blackness of the higher plane with earth's drab
whiteness and dingy appearance. The whole mass hung motionless over
the town. The blackness increased. Two hours after midday it was
already night in the streets. Dwellers on the ground floor drew down
their blinds; in the windows of the upper stories appeared one light
after another. In the public squares of the town, where a greater
portion of the sky could be seen, groups of people stood, looking now
upward into the heavens, now into the long, doubtful faces around
them. They told of the ravens that had come in great flocks into the
suburbs, they pointed to the deep, restless, uneven fluttering of the
jackdaws around St. George's and St. Nicholas', they spoke of
earthquakes, of land-slides and even of the Judgment Day. The more
courageous thought it was only a violent thunder-storm. But even that
seemed serious enough. The river and the so-called fire-pond, the
waters of which could, at a moment's notice, be let into any part of
the town by means of subterranean channels, were both frozen. Some
hoped the danger would pass by. But each time they looked up at the
sky they saw that the dark cloud-mass had not changed its position.
Two hours after midday it had stood there; toward midnight it still
stood there unmoved. Only it seemed to have become heavier and had
sunk lower. How could it move when there was not a breath of air in
motion, and to scatter and dispel