window. He noticed that the casement was open; and as he looked he saw the fluttering of a bit of drapery over the edge of the sill. It must have been the curtain, of course; but the sight of it gave him a strange sensation, not unlike one that he had experienced before on that spot, when he had been tricked by the moonlight into fancying that there was a woman straying in the aisles of the old church. He remembered that night and what it had revealed to him; and at the black thought the sky seemed to have darkened over his head. He had stood dreaming at the tower foot for fifteen minutes, and in that time the sky had become overcast, a cold wind had sprung up and now blew into his face, carrying a host of big drops with it. The rain had come at last! After the long spring and summer unmarred by clouded skies or rude gusts, the first rain had come. With a rough tenderness it dashed itself against the parched land and shook the tall trees till they murmured a delighted welcome. The dusty ferns growing low down about the knees of the great trees caught the happy news, and uncurled their tender fernlings that they might feel the welcome touch of the rain-drops, as they filtered through the greedy leaves and raced down the straight stems to reach the myriads of thirsty mouths yearning for their balm. The rain had come; and the languid stream, which had pined and shrunk to a pitiful thread of water, leaped joyously down its rocky bed. It would grow strong and young and beautiful again; its banks would bloom with flowers; its course would no longer run painfully over heated stones, between seared brown edges,--the rain had come!