a strange thing came upon England, for out
of the east there drifted a monstrous cloud, purple and piled, heavy
with evil, climbing slowly up the hushed heaven. In the shadow of that
strange cloud the leaves drooped in the trees, the birds ceased their
calling, and the cattle and the sheep gathered cowering under the
hedges. A gloom fell upon all the land, and men stood with their eyes
upon the strange cloud and a heaviness upon their hearts. They crept
into the churches where the trembling people were blessed and shriven by
the trembling priests. Outside no bird flew, and there came no rustling
from the woods, nor any of the homely sounds of Nature. All was still,
and nothing moved, save only the great cloud which rolled up and onward,
with fold on fold from the black horizon. To the west was the light
summer sky, to the east this brooding cloud-bank, creeping ever slowly
across, until the last thin blue gleam faded away and the whole vast
sweep of the heavens was one great leaden arch.

Then the rain began to fall. All day it rained, and all the night
and all the week and all the month, until folk had forgotten the blue
heavens and the gleam of the sunshine. It was not heavy, but it was
steady and cold and unceasing, so that the people were weary of its
hissing and its splashing, with the slow drip from the eaves. Always the
same thick evil cloud flowed from east to west with the rain beneath
it. None could see for more than a bow-shot from their dwellings for the
drifting veil of the rain-storms. Every morning the folk looked upward
for a break, but their eyes rested always upon the same endless cloud,
until at last they ceased to look up, and their hearts despaired of
ever seeing the change. It was raining at Lammas-tide and raining at the
Feast of the Assumption and still raining at Michaelmas. The crops and
the hay, sodden and black, had rotted in the fields, for they were not
worth the garnering. The sheep had died, and the calves also, so there
was little to kill when Martinmas came and it was time to salt the meat
for the winter. They feared a famine, but it was worse than famine which
was in store for them.

For the rain had ceased at last, and a sickly autumn sun shone upon
a land which was soaked and sodden with water. Wet and rotten leaves
reeked and festered under the foul haze which rose from the woods.
The fields were spotted with monstrous fungi of a size and color never
matched before--scarlet and mau