scheme and promptly the people dispersed homeward to gather all their possessions and wealth for concealment in the forests. The youths from the neighboring villages who had come to lend their assistance swiftly hastened to the upper part of the valley by the waterfall, where they busied themselves constructing the stockades to barricade the pass and prevent the Mongols from getting through.
There was a great commotion in the village. Shouts, commands and questions, the bellowing of oxen and continuous creaking of two-wheeled carts resounded from all directions, reverberating and re-echoing among the mountain tops. Sorrowfully the Tukholians bade farewell to their cottages, yards, homesteads, and green fields which this very day were to be ruined and trampled under the terrible Mongol inundation. The mothers carried their tearful, frightened youngsters and the fathers drove the beasts, the ox carts loaded with household goods, including bags of bread and clothing.
Dust rose in huge, billowy clouds over the village, only the silvery stream foamed and burbled as usual. The archaic giant Sentinel at the narrows of the entrance to the valley stood desolate, mourning the departure of his children from the beautiful valley, leaning over the entrance as if to bar the way with his giant stone form.
The hoary linden likewise grieved after them, standing forlorn in the middle of the meeting place outside the village, and the roaring cataract reflecting the crimson glow of the setting sun like a liquid column of blood hung disconsolately over the deserted Tukholian basin.
The village was empty, the houses enveloped in the long, gloomy shadows of evening. The clouds of dust had settled on the roadways and the calls and shouts were stilled as if a primeval desolation had devoured all life within the valley. The sun sank behind the Tukholian hills, cuddling into its blanket of rosy clouds. The dark purple spruce forests around
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