He fell silent, as though he had descried in the air the signs which he foretold. The hopeless death–rattle of the dying woman sounded from overhead. The storm growled in the distance; and the black clouds were rent by lightning. All nature seemed to be responding to the ruffian's appeal.
His grandiloquent speech and his play–acting made a great impression on the two accomplices.
"He frightens me," Otto muttered.
"It's the rum," Conrad replied. "But all the same he's foretelling terrible things."
"Things which prowl round us," shouted Vorski, whose ears noticed the least sound, "things which make part of the present moment and have been bequeathed to us by the pageant of the centuries. It's like a prodigious childbirth. And I tell the two of you, you will be the amazed witnesses of the
