Page:Clermont - Roche (1798, volume 2).djvu/127

 to the bottom, I fear, to-night. 'Tis very odd, yet very true, that the night before my Lord the Count de Merville (Heaven rest his soul! again crossing herself) died, there was just such a storm as there is now; the noise it made throughout the house was just as if people had been fighting and shrieking about it. I thought at the time, the sounds were presageful ones; particularly as the birds kept such a screaming and fluttering about the windows, for their screams are always sure foretellers of death. Indeed they have not been very quiet to-night."

"No (cried Madeline, wishing to check the involuntary horror with which the words of Agatha had inspired her), because they are now, as they were then, disturbed by the storm; 'tis well known, that their screams not only foretell, but last during one. I have heard my father say, that people who live near the sea always take warning by them, and never (if possible to avoid doing so) venture upon it, while they continue."