? ? ? ? There was something so weird and uncanny about the whole thing that it gave me a turn and made me feel quite faint. I began to wish, for the first time, that I had taken Johann's advice. Here a thought struck me, which came under almost mys- sterious circumstances and with a terrible shock. This was Wal- purgis Night!
? ? ? ? Walpurgis Night was when, according to the belief of mill- ions of people, the devil was abroad--when the graves were op- ened and the dead came forth and walked. When all evil things of earth and air and water held revel. This very place the driver had specially shunned. This was the depopulated vill- age of centuries ago.This was where the suicide lay; and this was the place where I was alone--unmanned, shivering with cold in a shroud of snow with a wild storm gathering again up- on me! It took all my philosophy, all the religion I had been taught,all my courage,not to collapse in a paroxysm of fright.
? ? ? ? And now a perfect tornado burst upon me. The ground shook as though thousands of horses thundered across it; and this time the storm bore on its icy wings, not snow, but great hailstones which drove with such violence that they might have come from the thongs of Balearic slingers--hailstones that beat down leaf and branch and made the shelter of the cypresses of no more avail than though their stems were stand- ing corn.
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