discover the smallest shred of cloud.

At the same time, the air, which had been hot all day--hot,
but buoyant, but stimulant, but quick with oxygen--seemed to
become thick, sluggish, suffocating, seemed to yield up its
vital principle, and to fall a dead weight upon the earth.
And this effect was accompanied by a sudden silence--the usual
busy out-of-door country noises were suddenly suspended: the
locusts stopped their singing; not a bird twittered; not a
leaf rustled: the world held its breath. And if the river
went on babbling, babbling, that was a very part of the
silence--accented, underscored it.

Yet still you could not discern a rack of cloud anywhere in the
sky--still, for a minute or two . . . . Then, before you knew
how it had happened, the snow-summits of Monte Sfiorito were
completely lapped in cloud.

And now the cloud spread with astonishing rapidity--spread and
sank, cancelling the sun, shrouding the Gnisi to its waist,
curling in smoky wreaths among the battlements of the
Cornobastone, turning the lake from sapphire to sombre steel,
filling the entire valley with a strange mixture of darkness
and an uncanny pallid light. Overhead it hung like a vast
canopy of leaden-hued cotton-wool; at the west it had a fringe
of fiery crimson, beyond which a strip of clear sky on the
horizon diffused a dull metallic yellow, like tarnished brass.

Presently, in the distance, there was a low growl of thunder;
in a minute, a louder, angrier growl--as if the first were a