"Now we are getting home," he said, with a bland laugh to Mrs. Christmas; "and you must have a very long rest after so much travelling. We shall see what the air of Schönstein will do for you, and a little of the Schönstein wine—eh, eh?" Their entrance to the Black Forest was inauspicious. It was towards the afternoon before they left Freiburg; and the air was oppressively hot and sultry. Just as they were approaching the Hollenthal—the Valley of Hell—a strange noise attracted Will’s attention; and, looking over the back of the open carriage, he saw behind them a great red cloud, that entirely shut out the landscape. Two minutes afterwards a sudden gust of wind smote them with the violence of a tornado; they were enveloped in a dense lurid pall of sand; and before they could cover over the carriage, great drops of rain began to fall. Then the far-off rumbling of thunder, and an occasional gleam of reflected lightning, told what was coming. The Count looked much alarmed. "The Hollenthal is a fearful place," said he, to the ladies: "overhanging rocks, dark as pitch, precipices, you know—and—and hadn’t we better return to Freiburg? That is, if you think you will be afraid. For myself, I’d rather go on to-night, and save a day." "Don’t think of turning on our account," said Annie Brunel. "Mrs. Christmas and I have been together in a good many storms." So they went on, and entered that gloomy gorge, which is here the gateway into the Black Forest. They had just got themselves closed in by the mighty masses of rock, when the storm thoroughly broke over their head. It was now quite dark, and the thin white shafts of lightning shot down through the ravine, lighting up the fantastic and rugged sides of the pass with a sudden sharpness. Then the thunder crackled overhead, and was re-echoed in hollow rumbles, as if they were in a cavern with huge waves beating outside; and the rain fell in torrents, hissing on the road, and swelling the rapid stream that foamed and dashed down its rocky channel by their side. Every flash whitened the four faces inside the carriage with a spectral glare; and sometimes they got a passing glance down the precipice, by the side of which the road wound, or up among the overhanging blocks and crags of the mountains. Mrs. Christmas had been in many a thunderstorm, but never in the Hollenthal; and the little woman was terrified out of her life. At every rattling report of the thunder she squeezed Miss Brunel’s hand the more tightly, and muttered another sentence of an incoherent prayer. "Unless you want to kill your horses, Count," said Will, "you’ll stop at the first inn we come to; that is about a mile farther on. I can tell by the sound of the wheels that the horses are dragging them through the mud and ruts by main force; and up this steep ascent that won’t last long." "Think of poor Mary and Hermann," said Annie Brunel. "Where must they be?"