oth towle
For some but new-departed sowle!

HAYWOOD: _Rape of Lucrece_.

The night was wild and stormy. The day had been sultry, with a lurid,
metallic-looking sky, hanging like a vast galvanic plate over the face
of nature. As evening drew on, everything betokened the coming tempest.
Unerring indications of its approach were noted by the weatherwise at
the hall. The swallow was seen to skim the surface of the pool so
closely that he ruffled its placid mirror as he passed; and then,
sharply darting round and round, with twittering scream, he winged his
rapid flight to his clay-built home, beneath the barn eaves. The kine
that had herded to the margin of the water, and sought, by splashing, to
relieve themselves from the keen persecution of their myriad insect
tormentors, wended stallwards, undriven, and deeply lowing. The deer,
that at twilight had trooped thither also for refreshment, suddenly,
"with expanded nostrils, snuffed the air," and bounded off to their
coverts, amidst the sheltering fernbrake. The rooks "obstreperous of
wing, in crowds combined," cawed in a way that, as plainly as words
could have done, bespoke their apprehension; and were seen, some
hovering and beating the air with flapping pinion, others shooting
upwards in mid space, as if to reconnoitre the weather; while others,
again, were croaking to their mates, in loud discordant tone, from the
highest branches of the lime-trees; all, seemingly, as anxious and as
busy as mariners before a gale of wind. At sunset, the hazy vapors,
which had obscured the horizon throughout the day, rose up in spiral
volumes, like smoke from a burning forest, and, becoming gradually
condensed, assumed the form of huge, billowy masses, which, reflecting
the sun's light, changed, as the sinking orb declined, from purple to
flame-color, and thence to ashy, angry gray. Night rushed onwards, like
a sable steed. There was a dead calm. The stillness was undisturbed,
save by an intermittent, sighing wind, which, hollow as a murmur from
the grave, died as it rose. At once the gray clouds turned to an inky
blackness. A single, sharp, intensely vivid flash, shot from the bosom
of the rack, sheer downwards, and struck the earth with a report like
that of a piece of ordnance. In ten minutes it was dunnest night, and a
rattling thunder-storm.

The progress of the storm was watched with infinite apprehension by the
crowd of tenantry