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unusually warm. The heat made itself felt even at this altitude: the temperature was sultry and oppressive. The pasture-lands around Saint Michael were bathed in the sunlight, and the skies were still clear, but mists hovered restlessly about the mountain-ranges, and dark clouds began to gather above their summits, now darkly veiled, and anon gleaming clear and distinct.
"I fear we are going to have a storm this evening," said Valentin. "This has been like a day in midsummer."
"Yes, we felt it so as we were coming up the mountain," said Hertha. "Do you think that we ought to be arranging for our return?"
"No," replied Michael, scanning the mountains, "when the clouds gather, as now, over there above the Eagle ridge, they will hang for hours about the rocks before the storm comes, and then it is apt to take its course down the valley and leave us untouched. But there will be a storm. Saint Michael's flaming sword is flashing there."
He pointed to the Eagle ridge, where in fact it was lightening, faintly and in the distance, but still unmistakably.
"Saint Michael's flaming sword?" Hertha repeated, inquiringly.
"Certainly; do you not know the popular superstition so wide-spread in these mountains?"
"No; I have never been here except for a few weeks at a time, and know nothing of the people."
"Their belief is that the lightning is the sword of the avenging archangel flashing from the skies, and that the storms, which often enough do mischief in the valleys, are punishments wrought by him."
"Saint Michael loves storm and flame," said Hertha, smiling. "I have always felt very proud that the leader of the heavenly host, the mighty angel of war and battle, is the patron saint of our family. You bear his name, too; it is my uncle Steinr?ck's."
Valentin cast an anxious glance at his former pupil, but Michael looked quite unmoved, and replied, composedly, "Yes--by chance."
"The saint's day is close at hand," the young Countess observed to the priest. "The church will be thronged then, will it not, your reverence?"
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