It was thus that the black clouds rose on this side also of Alick's sky, and they rose when he did not expect them. The dark storm clouds hemmed him in on every side, and when once the storm burst who could tell how long it might rage, and how many of his brightest hopes might not be destroyed by it for ever. He would not let himself think that ruin was staring him in the face, he comforted himself by looking forward to a good harvest, by counting up the money he expected to get from the grain merchants and wool-staplers, and with the hope that some lucky chance would stave off the evil day of reckoning a little longer. People always think when things are going ill with them that chance will come to their rescue and make everything easy to them. They treat the future as if it were a game at blind man's buff.--So the year 1848 began. CHAPTER V. This is not the place to decide whether the year 1848 brought most good or evil into the world. Let everyone give his verdict as he thinks best, I will not be drawn into expressing an opinion one way or the other, and will only describe how it affected the people about whom I am writing, for if I did not do that, the end of my book would be rather incomprehensible to my readers. When the February explosion took place in Paris, the Mecklenburgers imagined that it would affect them as little as if it had taken place in Turkey, or some such distant country, and most people thought it a good joke that anything so exciting should still be possible in the world. The good folk of Rahnstädt began to take much more interest in politics than they had ever done before, and the post-master said that if matters remained as they were, the thing would have to be enquired into. He had been obliged to order eleven new newspapers, four of which were the "Hamburg Correspondent," and seven were numbers of the "Tante Voss." He regarded this preponderance in favour of the latter paper as a very bad sign, for the "Tante Voss" inculcated the necessity of overthrowing the existing order of things; perhaps the editor meant no harm by it, but he did it all the same. Thus we see that forty-four politicians were provided with the latest news, for every four of them took a paper amongst them which they each read in turn, and the olive-branches of the various subscribers might be seen running with the newspapers to the different houses at which they were due, looking as if their parents thought it well to bring up their children to be post-men. But what were eleven newspapers in a town like Rahnstädt? The artisans were still unprovided for, that had to be seen to; and it was done before long.