A Daughter of Heth by William Black

AN AWFUL VISITOR.

It became noised abroad that the devil had been seen in Airlie. The Minister's sons not only took up the story which had been told them by their brother Wattie, but added to it and embellished it until it assumed quite dramatic proportions, and was picturesquely minute in detail. The rumour that grew and widened in the village was that, on the Sabbath forenoon, a black Something had been seen wandering about in the snow round the Manse. The boys, on returning from church, had heard mysterious voices in the deep silence of the small garden. Then Wattie, drawing near to the back-door, had suddenly been blinded by a rush of wind; flames darted out from the house and surrounded him; the current of air drove him into a snowdrift; and the awful Something, with a shriek of fiendish laughter, had fled past him and disappeared, and there was a low rumble, as of distant thunder echoing along the hollow stillness of the sky.