“Come on, you,” said another; “I be terrable tired, bean’t you? Wonder how long it wull be to the Judgment Daay?”
So they went by the window, and each as she passed dropped a lowly curtsey to “Measter” in the beehive chair. Then at last the great blood-red rim of the sun went down, and a wondrous glory of light rushed over the earth. A fiery blaze surged up into the sky, shooting from the west to the zenith, and thence to the east in the twinkling of an eye; like the glow of a grand aurora, but ninefold more brilliant, a deep-tinted crimson. Men stayed and looked up, amazed at the beauty and the awe of it; for the world was changed, as if it were on fire, and the flames like a flood sweeping up from the western edge. Into the chamber came the reflection—as of the last conflagration that we dare not think of, when the sky shall roll away as parchment—and the place was filled with a luminous glamour. Listen! faintly up from the silence of the ages comes the chaunt of the monks:
Dies irae, dies illa,
Solvet saeclum in favilla.
The day of wrath seemed nigh at hand. Away down in the vale, and yonder, over the everlasting hills, flowed the wonder of the light; but the old man’s face gave no sign, dazed, maybe, by the grandeur of it. But Felix St. Bees, riding towards Warren House once more, as he reached the first slopes of the hills, was suddenly bathed in the glory, and drew rein and gazed about him. A dome of fire above reflected by the dull earth—a faint, phosphoric, shimmering rosiness among the grass blades. Upon the margin of the world a thicker vapour swelling upward with a deeper red, as of smoke tinted by the furnace under. On the sunset side of the tree-trunks a streak of crimson, and every leaf gleaming on its shiny smoothness; through the thickets a warm haze pouring, and the whiteness of the road before him reddened, as by the breath of flame. He paused, rapt in the deep marvelling which is prayer, and watched till it passed away. Then he pushed on among the hills.
Coming slowly up a steep ascent, where on the summit, among the thorn thickets and the gnarled ashes, was a little lonely inn, he saw a dozen or more men, labouring hard and shouting by the side of the road. The highway had worn itself a gully or hollow, lessening the pull of the hill somewhat, and leaving a low but steep bank of coarse chalky rubble. On the sward a tinker’s donkey was peacefully grazing, heedless of the excitement.
“We’ve got un!”
“Heave un out, you!”
“Lay on, Jim!”
“Let I try!”
“Peach un up!”