, drowning
out the light of the sun, stilling the songs of the little birds, and
turning to the sky the pale underside of the leaves of the roadside
trees. A darkness as of night itself covered the land. Rain began to
fall in great spattering drops. Now, by the glare of the lightning,
Giles would see the endless fields, drenched and waving in the rain; now
the Thunder Valley itself, covered with a floor of onrushing cloud
unfolding, turning, and sinking in continuous and multitudinous
activity.

Night came on amid the storm, and a flash of lightning revealed to Giles
that he had lost his way. Hoping to find a shelter or some friendly
cottage, however, he plunged on; but the road became worse and worse,
and he was again and again forced to wade brooks flooded by the tempest.
At length his steps led him into a pine wood, and there in the thickest
part he found a little shelter, and fell asleep.

When he woke, numb, cramped, and cold, he found to his horror that in
the night and darkness he had blundered on into the Valley of Thunder,
into which no living soul had ever before advanced. Worst of all, he
could not find the way by which he had entered, for high crags rose on
every side and held him prisoner. Presently, to his amazement, he beheld
a narrow flight of steps cut in the solid rock of the mountainside. Up
these steps climbed Giles, and as he mounted higher, the stairs began to
twist and turn amid the crags and pinnacles. At the end of an hour's
ascent, he found himself at a turn from which the Thunder Valley, the
chasm through which it opened into the plain, and the wide plain itself,
could all be seen.

Giles lingered there a while, trying to see his own cottage, or perhaps
Phyllida on her white horse; but he could see neither one nor the other.
So he began to climb again. All day long he climbed and climbed and
climbed. Twilight fell. The circle of the sun dropped below the level
horizon of the distant fields. One still golden star hung on the fringe
of the sun-glow. The stairs began to widen, and presently Giles found
himself at the summit of the mountain. Before his eyes lay a little
level field surrounded by strange crags and pinnacles, looming tall and
black against the fast-appearing stars, and as Giles rubbed his eyes in
wonder, lights shone here and there in the sides of the towering rocks,
even as lights shine in the windows of a village when you see it from
afar.

Giles rubbed his eyes again. Light