Overhead the arch of heaven spread more ample than elsewhere, as over the
open sea; and that vastness gave, and still gives, such "effects" of
cloudland, of sunrise, and sunset, as can be seen nowhere else within
these isles. They might well have been star worshippers, those Girvii, had
their sky been as clear as that of the East: but they were like to have
worshipped the clouds rather than the stars, according to the too
universal law, that mankind worship the powers which do them harm, rather
than the powers which do them good.

And therefore the Danelagh men, who feared not mortal sword, or axe,
feared witches, ghosts, Pucks, Will-o'-the-Wisps, werewolves, spirits of
the wells and of the trees, and all dark, capricious, and harmful beings
whom their fancy conjured up out of the wild, wet, and unwholesome
marshes, or the dark wolf-haunted woods. For that fair land, like all
things on earth, had its darker aspect. The foul exhalations of autumn
called up fever and ague, crippling and enervating, and tempting, almost
compelling, to that wild and desperate drinking which was the
Scandinavian's special sin. Dark and sad were those short autumn days,
when all the distances were shut off, and the air choked with foul brown
fog and drenching rains from off the eastern sea; and pleasant the
bursting forth of the keen north-east wind, with all its whirling
snowstorms. For though it sent men hurrying out into the storm, to drive
the cattle in from the fen, and lift the sheep out of the snow-wreaths,
and now and then never to return, lost in mist and mire, in ice and
snow;--yet all knew that after the snow would come the keen frost and the
bright sun and cloudless blue sky, and the fenman's yearly holiday, when,
work being impossible, all gave themselves up to play, and swarmed upon
the ice on skates and sledges, and ran races, township against township,
or visited old friends full forty miles away; and met everywhere faces as
bright and ruddy as their own, cheered by the keen wine of that dry and