After a calm winter, storms were ushering in the spring.

I had put Miss Marchmont to bed; I sat at the fireside sewing.

The wind was wailing at the windows; it had wailed all day; but, as night deepened, it took a new tone--an accent keen, piercing, almost articulate to the ear; a plaint, piteous and disconsolate to the nerves, trilled in every gust.
"Oh, hush! hush!" I said in my disturbed mind, dropping my work, and making a vain effort to stop my ears against that subtle, searching cry.

I had heard that very voice ere this, and compulsory observation had forced on me a theory as to what it boded.

Three times in the course of my life, events had taught me that these strange accents in the storm--this restless, hopeless cry--denote a coming state of the atmosphere unpropitious to life.