wound cried aloud for justice, the open grave for him who would close it.  And it was he whom the bells called to justice, he who must close the grave before the disaster he had forged should descend upon an innocent head.  He must climb to the tower and correct the flaw.  But when he got there, it struck two, dizziness seized hold of him and dragged him down after his brother.  From day to day, from hour to hour, the beautiful young widow saw him grow paler and became pale with him.  Only the old gentleman in his blindness did not see the cloud which was lowering so threateningly.  The air was very sultry in the house with the green shutters.  No one who looks at the little house now would suspect how sultry it once was there.

It was on the night before the appointed betrothal day.  Snow had fallen, and then great cold had suddenly set in.  For several nights the so-called St. Elmo’s fire had been seen darting tongues of flame from the tops of the towers to the gleaming stars of heaven.  In spite of the 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