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The last bit of blue sky yielded to the on-sweep of clouds Like angry surf the pale glea front, swept beyond the eastern rampart of the valley

The purple deepened to black Broad sheets of lightning flared over the western wall There were not yet any ropes or zigzag streaks darting down through the gathering darkness The storm center was still beyond Surprise Valley

"Listen!Listen!" cried Bess, with her lips close to Venters's ear "You'll hear Oldring's knell!"

"What's that?"

"Oldring's knell When the wind blows a gale in the caves it 's knell They believe it bodes his death I think he believes so, too It's not like any sound on earthIt's beginning Listen!"

The gale swooped doith a hollow unearthly howl It yelled and pealed and shrilled and shrieked It wasand aat the western break of the valley, it rushed along each gigantic cliff, whistling into the caves and cracks, to reat stone bridge Gone, as into an engulfing roar of surging waters, it seeain

It was only wind, thought Venters Here sped and shrieked the sculptor that carved out the wonderful caves in the cliffs It was only a gale, but as Venters listened, as his ears becah it or above it pealed low and perfectly clear and persistently unifore sound that had no counterpart in all the sounds of the eleony of the gale A knell of all upon which it blew!

Black night enfolded the valley Venters could not see his co hold of her hand on his ars huddle closer to him Suddenly the dense, black vault overhead split asunder to a blue-white, dazzling streak of lightning The whole valley lay vividly clear and lunificent, the stone bridge gli's fire Then all flashed black again--blacker than pitch--a thick, impenetrable coal-blackness

And there ca report Instantly an echo resounded with clapping crash The initial report was nothing to the echo It was a terrible, living, reverberating, detonating crash The wall threw the sound across, and could have reater roar if it had slipped in avalanche Froed in lessening power, and boomed in thinner volume, and clapped weaker and weaker till a final clap could not reach across the waiting cliff