Five days had passed since the bishop's visit, but still the long hoped-for rain had not come. But a dry easterly gale had risen, which swept the fields, already baked as hard as stone; and for two days the district was enveloped in grey dust. In Vielby a catastrophe was hourly expected. They had arrived at the very end of the winter fodder, and the peasants, with their usual disposition to exaggerate, already talked of tearing down the thatch to keep life in the cattle. They had long given up consulting the barometer, or interpreting as omens the crowing of the cocks at midday, or the swarming of midges in the evening. Every morning the sun broke through the misty veil of night, pierced every cloud and drove away each shred of mist from wood or bog.
Then one morning the edge of the sky in the south-west turned blood-red and then pale yellow, dark yellow, and lastly blue-black … a heavy thunder-cloud rose, a shapeless elephantine mass above the horizon. The people came out of their houses at the first subterranean rumbles. Even Jensen, the chairman of the Parish Council, who did not usually shew himself among the people,
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