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Sir Nigel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
page 6 of 476 (01%)
weary of its hissing and its splashing, with the slow drip from
the eaves. Always the same thick evil cloud flowed from east to
west with the rain beneath it. None could see for more than a
bow-shot from their dwellings for the drifting veil of the
rain-storms. Every morning the folk looked upward for a break,
but their eyes rested always upon the same endless cloud, until at
last they ceased to look up, and their hearts despaired of ever
seeing the change. It was raining at Lammas-tide and raining at
the Feast of the Assumption and still raining at Michaelmas. The
crops and the hay, sodden and black, had rotted in the fields, for
they were not worth the garnering. The sheep had died, and the
calves also, so there was little to kill when Martinmas came and
it was time to salt the meat for the winter. They feared a
famine, but it was worse than famine which was in store for them.

For the rain had ceased at last, and a sickly autumn sun shone
upon a land which was soaked and sodden with water. Wet and
rotten leaves reeked and festered under the foul haze which rose
from the woods. The fields were spotted with monstrous fungi of a
size and color never matched before--scarlet and mauve and liver
and black. It was as though the sick earth had burst into foul
pustules; mildew and lichen mottled the walls, and with that
filthy crop Death sprang also from the water-soaked earth. Men
died, and women and children, the baron of the castle, the
franklin on the farm, the monk in the abbey and the villein in his
wattle-and-daub cottage. All breathed the same polluted reek and
all died the same death of corruption. Of those who were stricken
none recovered, and the illness was ever the same--gross boils,
raving, and the black blotches which gave its name to the disease.
All through the winter the dead rotted by the wayside for want of
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