Page:Famous stories from foreign countries.djvu/45



was night; winter and snow. The night was so dark, so full of terror that people in the little mountain village of O— could not remember when they last saw day and the sun; bright light and blue sky. The wind blew, too! And what a wind it was. It was as if it came from some world of the dead, because in its voice there was something that made the nerves tremble and painted horror before the brain. It played with the snow, and the play was the play of a demon. Not only people shivered, but the entire mountain village, its poor little houses, its hay stacks, and the dry mounds of manure piled up for burning. And one could not tell whether the shivering was because of the cold, or because of the accursed storm that was raging. For these mountain village dwellers, thunder and lightning, storm and cold, were not merely harmless caprices of nature. The peasants knew how sad the result might be. Why should they not be afraid and tremble! But it was lucky that the sign of the cross was sure protection against lightning; and for the snow storm there was the stable and the sakhi.

Woi—woi—howled the storm. Every time its terrifying voice rang out, the men in the sakhi of