I. THE HOUSE OF LORING


In the month of July of the year 1348, between the feasts of St.
Benedict and of St. Swithin, a strange thing came upon England,
for out of the east there drifted a monstrous cloud, purple and
piled, heavy with evil, climbing slowly up the hushed heaven. In
the shadow of that strange cloud the leaves drooped in the trees,
the birds ceased their calling, and the cattle and the sheep
gathered cowering under the hedges. A gloom fell upon all the
land, and men stood with their eyes upon the strange cloud and a
heaviness upon their hearts. They crept into the churches where
the trembling people were blessed and shriven by the trembling
priests. Outside no bird flew, and there came no rustling from
the woods, nor any of the homely sounds of Nature. All was still,
and nothing moved, save only the great cloud which rolled up and
onward, with fold on fold from the black horizon. To the west was
the light summer sky, to the east this brooding cloud-bank,
creeping ever slowly across, until the last thin blue gleam faded
away and the whole vast sweep of the heavens was one great leaden
arch.

Then the rain began to fall. All day it rained, and all the night
and all the week and all the month, until folk had forgotten the
blue heavens and the gleam of the sunshine. It was not heavy, but
it was steady and cold and unceasing, so that the people were