In the "Stranger People's" country

by Charles Egbert Craddock

VII.

The "falling weather" came hard upon its prophecy. All that day the clouds mustered. Films, lace-like and fretting the roseate heavens, thickened as the light gradually dawned, and were dense before the sun rose—dense, but white and semi-translucent, and a certain focus of opaque glister, slowly mounting and mounting the sky, gave token how the great chariot of the sun fared along the celestial highways to the zenith. No fierce monitions in this noiseless eclipse of the diurnal splendors of the rich summertide; the landscape lay in a lethargic shadow, and time seemed to wait somewhere and to drowse dully, so long the hours loitered, so little did they change; the leaves hung still; a breathless, sultry pause bated the pulses of the world. In the afternoon—one who judged of time by the sun might hardly know were it the impending cloud or the approach of night—this long monotony of the atmosphere was broken by a gradual darkening, and presently an almost imperceptible rain was gently falling. The air was dank, the lungs expanded to longer and longer respirations, and the clouds were coming down the mountain-side—coming in fleecy ranks along the dark purple indentations which marked the ravines, the vanguard with broken flakes that suggested woolly leaders of flocks.

"Look yander at the sheep, Moses," Letitia adjured the infant as he sat on the floor of the porch—"look yander at the flocks o' the old man ez herds the clouds on the bald o' the mounting."

Moses stared with inconceivable impressions at the fictitious sheep, and more than once looked up with a contemplative eye and a sensitive lip at Letitia to hear again of the fabled herder whose flocks wore this tenuous guise. How much he believed, how much he understood, must ever remain a matter of conjecture. He hearkened to all that was told to him which trenched upon the wonderful lore of the nursery, but maintained the while the inscrutable, impenetrable reticence of the infant who can but who will not talk. And now all similitude of flocks was lost in a sudden precipitation of the cloud masses toward the valley. Gullies, abysses, the river, every depression seemed to exude vapors, that hung suspended in the air, till they were met by the downward rush. All at once a louder patter was on the little slanting roof of the porch, and upon its floor the drops, glittering in their elastic rebound, multiplied till Letitia, catching Moses under the arms, bore him within, his feet sticking straight out, conserving his sitting posture, and placed him on the broad hearth before the fire. And at last—whether the night or only its dull simulacrum—darkness descended. Letitia, looking forth from the open door, could see the pale shifting mists rather by the glow from the hearth than by the aid of such gray and sombre twilight as might linger without. The rain fell invisibly in the midst of the vapors; only the detached drops that pattered upon the edge of the floor of the porch gave out a steely gleam as they smartly rebounded and fell again. The room was all the cheerier for the dull and dank aspect of the world outside. The spinning-wheel drawn up to one corner of the hearth promised an evening full of quiet industry and a musical whirring pleasant to hear. The warping bars, on the opposite side of the brown wall, were full of color, much red predominating in many shades, for Moses had early seemed to notice the rich, brilliant tint, and it had won his rare approval. Indeed, so much Turkey red went into the fashioning of his garments that the hanks of yarn and cotton designed for them and hanging from the ceiling served to brighten the room, as if a bizarre decorative effect had been intentionally sought. The fire blazed merrily, and the light flashed back from the barrel of the rifle that rested on its rack of deer antlers against the chimney.

Letitia, in her faint-blue dress, moved deftly about, giving a touch here and there to set things in their eventide order, murmuring as she went a little song, scarcely a tune—more like the fragmentary melodies that the mountain brooks sing on their way to the valley. "A cur'ous sort'n psalmin' what she makes up out'n her own head," her mother used to say, with that rural distrust of all out of the usual experience. An ash cake was baking under the clean silver-gray mounds at one side of the great fire, which was too large for comfort—for the air was not chilly, albeit both doors and windows stood open—and too hot even for its purpose of cooking supper, for now and again the eggs, also roasting under the ashes, gave token by a sharp crack that one had succumbed unduly to the heat, had burst and spilled its yolk. On each occasion Moses, sitting after his lowly habit on the floor before the fire, gave a nervous little jerk, and looked with a certain anxiety at his mother, aware that all was not well in the domestic administration. Adelaide, kneeling by the hearth, frowned almost mechanically, and forgot the mishap the next moment. Presently she looked up at the grayish blackness that filled the door and window.

"I dun'no' whether it air night or no," she said, the red live coals that she had raked out upon the hearth casting a dull reflection upon her oval face and large dark eyes. "I mought be too forehanded a-gittin' supper fur aught I kin tell."

"Ye'll find out whenst it air supper-time by the comin' o' Baker Anderson," remarked Letitia. "That boy air wound up ter the very minute. His folks never kin need a clock ter find out what's meal-times, nor ter look at the sun. Mus' be a great comfort ter ennybody ter hev sech a punctual stommick in the house. My mother would dote on feedin' him."

And, sure enough, presently here was Baker, a great thumping boy of sixteen, with a man's frame and a callow, square, beardless, sheepish face, as conscious of his feet as if he were a centipede, as conscious of his big hands as if he had a hundred. All the grace and the strength of his muscles deserted him at the door, where he hesitated as if he doubted how he should before all these spectators ever reach the chair by the fireside which he usually occupied. Then he made a tremulous rush, deposited himself sidelong upon it, and, looking up from under his straight eyebrows, said, with a gasp, "G'evenin', Mis' Yates."

He did not dare to address Letitia, so conscious was he of her latent mockery, and of her knowledge of the criticism upon the household which he had made in his innocent confidences to his aunt, who had ruthlessly repeated it to the parties in interest: he had said that he had no objection to Mis' Yates, but that Letitia eyed him ez ef she could sca'cely keep from laffin' at him, an' Moses eyed him ez if he could sca'cely keep from smackin' his jaws; an' 'twixt 'em both he hardly knew whether he stood on his head or his heels; an' ef 'twarn't fur Mis' Yates, he an' his rifle would make tharselves sca'ce at Steve Yates's cabin.

To the manners of Moses, indeed, one far less sensitive than the guest might readily have taken exceptions. From time to time he angrily surveyed Baker, knitting his scanty brows, and always crooking his fat dimpled arm above his forehead whenever he renewed his gaze; and although this gesture is not among the generally accepted expressions of contumely, it had especial capacities to convey a flout. Poor Baker had expected gambols with the infant to be a means of lessening the awkwardness of his self-consciousness, and to put him on a more easy basis with the household. Mrs. Yates often felt herself obliged to apologize for the unfriendly conduct of Moses, and even to expostulate with the great Dagon, and beg him to mitigate his severity. He seemed instigated to this course in some sort by the malice of an old dog, brindled a bluish-gray and white, who had adopted a senile vagary that the visitor harbored wicked intentions against the household hero, which he evidently felt delegated to frustrate. He always came, upon the boy's entrance, and placed himself between the guest and the precious "leetle Mose," who found the animal's side, cushioned with fat, a sufficiently soft and comfortable pillow, and was wont to lean upon it, resting his downy head and fine pink cheek on the dark tigerish hair of the thick neck—the formidable fangs of the brute's half-open mouth, the fiery eye and rising bristles, bearing fierce contrast to the delicate infantile curves and coloring of the child's face. Here nightly, until Baker Anderson was led off to his slumbers in the roof-room, the dog sat immovable, now and then emitting a growl if he so much as glanced at Moses. Mrs. Yates could only redouble her suavity to the household defender, and add some soothing dainty to the supper. "I made this johnny-cake express fur you-uns, Baker," she would say. And when he could no longer be fed, she exerted herself to entertain him in the brief interval before the young fellow, tired out with the day's ploughing or hunting, would succumb to the heat and the stillness, and nod before the fire. Doubtless this talk was a salutary necessity for Adelaide, for the days were full of tears, and the nights of sighs and wakeful hours, and dreams of vague unhappiness and discordant, half-realized terrors. Letitia's smiling assurance, "How ye an' Steve air a-goin' ter laff an' laff over this some o' these days!" she could not accept, although it was grateful to hear, and she would still her sobs to listen to its iteration. But poor Baker, when awake, called for all her sympathy and countenance, thus helpless amongst his enemies, and so sorrow must needs be forgotten for a time.

They all sat thus this evening, the supper cleared away, the hearth swept, one of Moses's red stockings for winter wear growing under the needles in Adelaide's hand, the little flax spinning-wheel awhirl as Letitia drew out the long thread, the baby half drowsing on the fierce old dog's neck, the doors all aflare, when a sudden chill wind sprang up. They heard it rising far, far away—a deep, hollow murmur, all unlike the throbbing of the cataract, which was ceaseless in the darkness, beating like the heart of the night; it came stealthily down through the gap in the mountain, and the trees, hitherto silent and motionless above the little house, suddenly fell to trembling and clashed their boughs, and long-drawn sibilant sighs pervaded all their rustling foliage.

"Listen!" Letitia said, her foot pausing on the treadle, as she turned her brilliant azure eyes to the night, all black without. "Thar's the last o' the rain and the fog."

The drops were redoubled on the roof, but presently they grew fewer, discursive, and now sounded only the fitful patter of those shed by the foliage where they had lodged.

A more turbulent gust banged the batten shutters and shook the door, then went screaming, screaming through the black night, with a voice so dolorous and wild that more than once Adelaide put down her knitting, and looked up with a face pallid and agitated, as if she realized in the sound the utterance of the dreary grief that rent her heart.

"Shet the door an' bar it up, Baker," observed Letitia. "Ye air younger'n me"—with a mimicry of age—"or I'd wait on you-uns."

The boy's manner of shuffling to the door and window and securing them kindled a smile in her eyes. He could not encounter them when he was once more ensconced in the corner, so he chanced to glance at the old dog, which instantly growled, and then he was fain to stare sedulously into the fire. "I wouldn't be s'prised none ef the coals war ter hop up an' scorch me," he said bitterly to himself, for the inner man, or boy, was by no means the submissive, humble entity which the outward shy, awkward cloddishness might intimate. The gusts had sprung after him upon the door, and shook it as if a hundred beasts had lain in ambush there, baffled by his forethought.

"Oh!" cried Adelaide, all her distraught nerves a-jarring. "What do that sound like?"

"Like the wind," said Letitia, bending her smiling face to the spinning-wheel, "the wind ez air stoppin' the rain, an' the corn crap'll be short. Don't ye see Baker thar drappin' a tear, like a good farmer, 'count o' the drought that this leetle rain don't break?"

Baker turned scarlet and shuffled his big feet and moistened his lips with his tongue, his traduced dry eyes, hot and angry, staring steadily at the fire.

"One tear, Baker, shed fur sins mought go further than that leetle tear o' yourn will go with the country's corn crap."

Letitia spoke solemnly, and looked with affected gravity at the boy, who was so lugubrious under her teasing that she could not resist, and burst into a peal of laughter. His lips mechanically distended, exhibiting two great unbroken arches of strong teeth.

"Don't, don't show all them teeth ter Moses, Baker," she adjured him, in pretended alarm. "Think how bent on gittin' teeth he be now, an' ef he war ter set his heart on havin' yourn too, how lonesome ye'd be 'thout 'em at meal-times!"

Moses, hearing his name, roused himself with an effort, looking over his shoulder frowningly, with a shrill little ill-tempered squeal, for he did not permit her to speak of him, and rarely to address him.

"Oh, oh, listen to the wind!" cried Adelaide, unheeding them all. "It sounds like the voice o' suthin' that can't rest in its grave."

"Waal," said Litt, sturdily, "I ain't 'quainted with that kind o' harnts myself, ez 'ain't got no better manners 'n ter go screechin' like the bad boys in the cove arter a day at the still—'thout the excuse o' bein' in liquor, too. We'd better make mo' stir ourselves, then we can't hear 'em. Baker, mebbe ye mought gin us a song—" she bent a beguiling smile upon him—he, who could not even talk, to be asked to sing! "I hev got a notion ez you-uns be a plumb sweet singer."

Her air of coquetry and the implied compliment were of that phase of her manners far more formidable to the callow youth than even her open ridicule. He could have sunk through the floor. He knew, however, that his blushes, his abashed and downcast eyes, were delightful to her. The indignation and resentment kindled by this reflection roused that more stalwart personality of self-respect within him, and gave him courage to mumble, a trifle surlily, that she had better sing a song herself if she hankered for singing. To this she replied, with a sudden swift transition to patently mocking glee:

"I think so myself, Baker, I do think so; but I didn't s'pose ye war so smart ez ter know it too."

And then, with the accompaniment of the musical whir of her wheel, and the sibilant fugue of the wind in the trees, and the blare of the fluctuating flames in the chimney, she began to sing in a voice low and sweet; and while she sang a strange thing happened.

As she drew the thread along, holding the end out in her hand with a graceful sweep of her arm, her blue eyes full of pensive lights, her lips parted, her tiny foot marking time on the treadle, she noted that one of the batten shutters, which had so regularly beaten in the blast against the window-frame, as the other did even now, had grown steady. All at once the fire-light leaped up with a keen glitter, and at the long narrow crevice between the shutter and the window she saw a face peering in so stealthily, a face so long and white and unrecognizable—seeming hardly human in the narrow section which the rift showed—that a sudden terror smote her heart, the words of the song rose to a scream, and, the wheel still whirling, the thread in her hand, she pointed to the window, exclaiming: "The face! the face! I'm feared o' the face!"

Adelaide had sprung wide-eyed and pale to her feet; the dog, vaguely apprehending the commotion, was fiercely growling. The clumsy boy had risen, overturning the chair with the motion, and at that instant the shutter slammed freely back and forth against the window-frame at the whim of the wayward gusts, and naught was there when the rifle was thrust to the crevice.

"Let him look down the muzzle o' that now," cried Baker Anderson, "ef he's so fond o' peekin'!"

"Don't shoot, Baker; don't shoot!" exclaimed Adelaide, her face still drawn and white. "I reckon Litt didn't see nuthin', nohow."

"My eyesight bein' sorter poorly, through agin' so much lately," the girl said, in her characteristic tone; but her own face was pallid, and as she leaned back in the chair she panted heavily.

"Don't fool me, Litt," the other adjured her, with heart-break in her voice. "War it Steve?"

"I never admired Steve," Litt gasped, "but I never thunk he war ugly enough ter be tarrified at the sight o' him."

Moses, who had turned his head upward, and looked bewildered from one to the other, now burst into a piteous wail with tears and sobs, imagining, from the excited talk, that an altercation was in progress, for, singularly enough for one of his stern and belligerent character, he deprecated a quarrel, and resented all interchange of loud words. His mother knelt by him to pat him on the back; the old dog licked his bare pink foot. Letitia still leaned back in the chair, her frightened face all at variance with her usual gay bravado.

"Who did it look like, Litt?" demanded Adelaide, not lifting her voice, and the peace-loving Moses, tolerating no quarrel that was not of his own making, turned his face, where the tears still lodged on the curves and in the dimples, to supervise the pacific answer.

"Like nuthin' I ever see afore; like nuthin' livin'," Litt barely whispered.

Adelaide's face blanched even in the red fire-light. The hand that patted Moses trembled as she knelt beside him.

Baker Anderson's blood was merely slightly stirred. The bluff courage with which he was endowed—no less sturdy because callow—enabled him to regard the odd incident as a welcome and exciting break in the monotony. He had considered his stay here with his rifle as rather the result of a senile whim on the part of his uncle than because any danger might menace the deserted Yates household. He was glad to have his presence and that of his weapon justified by some simulacrum of fear and trouble. Litt fancied that she detected in his manner a relish of her terrors. At all events, he evidently suddenly thought well enough of himself to venture an observation.

"Ye needn't be 'sturbed none, Mis' Yates. 'Twarn't nobody, mebbe. Ef ye'd like fur me, I'd take my rifle an' sorter tramp round the yard a leetle an' look out."

"No; no; bide whar ye air," cried Mrs. Yates. "Litt say," she faltered, "it moughtn't—be—alive," her voice quavered to silence.

"Oh, thar ain't nobody buried close enough round hyar ter git ter 'sturbin' we-uns, Mis' Yates," Baker reassured her with a capable swagger.

So fully had his sense of superiority been restored by the demonstration of the imperviousness of his courage that it seemed impossible that he should ever have quaked before that small bully in blue, even with her beautiful and bewildering eyes and her smiling lips and the keen whetted edge of her ridicule; he glanced hardily at her as she still leaned back in her chair, limp and prostrated by the fright, the overturned spinning-wheel at her feet. Oh, it was a great thing to be a man—or a boy who thought himself a man—even burdened with a pair of big clumsy feet, and several superfluous hands, and a tongue tied in the presence of small bright-eyed bullies in blue! He was emboldened to evolve a theory of his own concerning the conduct of ghosts, which was doubtless as worthy of respect as any such theories ever are.

"Harnts don't wander much ginerally," he said. "They hang round thar own buryin'-groun' mainly. Ye kin see 'em of a moonlight night, they say, a-settin' on thar graves, an' lookin' through the palin's o' the church-house yard—though I 'ain't viewed none, myse'f. An' sometimes whenst fraish-buried they walk in thar kin-folkses' house."

"Oh, Baker!" interpolated Mrs. Yates.

"But ye ain't got no fraish-buried kin, Mis' Yates," Baker hastened to stipulate. "Steve air alive an' hearty, else ye'd hev hearn 'bout him, bad news bein' a fast rider. An' thar ain't no graves in the neighborhood, an' so thar ain't no harnts o' course."

"He hev tuk a census o' sperits lately," cried Letitia, with a tremulous laugh.

"Thar air the Leetle People's buryin'-groun' nigh hyar," faltered Adelaide.

But Baker Anderson had never heard of the "Leetle People." He looked mystified, and a trifle startled, despite the resources of his courage; and, after she explained, he presently spoke with an insistent desire, most plainly to be observed, to exclude the Little People from the possibilities.

"Mos' likely it air jes' some lazy loon a-goin' home from the still or suthin', an' hearin' the singin', stopped to listen. Ez ter the Leetle People"—his voice drawled the words lingeringly, his eyes dwelt meditatingly on the fire, he was evidently falling under a morbid mysterious fascination—"I reckon ez they hev been lef' be all these years mebbe they won't git a-goin' at this late day."

The wind came and went in mighty surges; the trees groaned. Amongst it all one could hear the melancholy roar of the falls, and now and again a gust with a stealthy touch tried the door or the shutter, and went skurrying around the house with a rustle of the grass and the bushes to simulate a human flight.

"I wonder," said Letitia, suddenly—she had lifted the spinning-wheel, had placed it before her, and was bending her face above it, still white from the nervous shock, as she righted the confusion of the tangled thread—"I wonder, Adelaide, ef ye ever hearn that thar Mr. Shattuck talkin' much 'bout them Stranger People?"

"No—but I hev hearn Stephen tell 'bout'n it, an' how he wants thar pearls on thar necks an' thar leetle jugs an' dishes, ez they thunk enough of ter hev buried with 'em, 'lowin' they'd be thar at the las' day."

She paused in surprise. Letitia's pale face had turned a vivid scarlet.

"Adelaide!" she cried. "Do ye actially b'lieve that? Ye 'pear plumb bereft, an' ye talk like a fool. He ain't wantin' thar pearls an' sech. They 'ain't got none wuth hevin'!"

"Why don't he let 'em stay in thar peaceful graves, then, till the light shines in the east?" retorted the other, with spirit.

"I axed him 'bout'n it," Letitia went on; "he say he wants ter know ef they air small people sure enough, or whether they air jes' common Injun chil'n; he 'lows he kin tell suthin' o' what nation they war by thar skulls an' jugs an' ornamints." She paused, her eyes bright with a sort of bewildered surprise. How she had remembered this strange talk of his! How she had laid it to heart!

"Mr. Shattuck told about one man," she resumed, "that seen the skeletons of some Tennessee pygmies, an' he writ in a book ez they war all grown up, but leetle, leetle folks, with thar teeth all separate an' sharp at the p'ints, like a dog's or a wolf's fangs."

Adelaide uttered an exclamation of horror.

"An' thar air lots o' cur'ous leavin's in Tennessee—bones o' big animals sech ez thar ain't none of now; an' old forts with trees many hundred year old growin' over 'em, an' built out'n stones; an' strange paintings on high cliffs, what some say war done by folks in a boat whenst a flood war in the lan'; an' cur'ous images an' weepons, an' cups an' jugs sech ez can't be fund nowadays nowhar. An' of all the queer things an' cur'ous tales in Tennessee, the Leetle People take the lead."

"What do he want ter know thar nation fur?" demanded Adelaide, stonily. "They lived, and they air dead. Let him take God's grace for the wisdom of it, an' ax no questions."

"Oh, ye think he air a common thief ez be arter the value o' thar truck, like the ignorant folks round hyar!" cried Letitia, repudiating kinship and the community in the pride of her new scientific acquisitions.

"Ye l'arnt that from him, too, I reckon—a-girdin' at yer own home folks!" said Adelaide, reproachfully.

Letitia's face was dyed even a deeper scarlet. "Oh, he be some smarter 'n folks in gineral," she protested, nevertheless. "An' Steve tole ye so, too, I'll be bound."

This allusion struck home.

"Waal, thar's been enough an' too much quar'lin' over him now, Litt," Adelaide said, sadly. "Don't let's ye an' me fall out 'bout'n him. Sing some mo'—yer singin' air powerful clear an' sweet—sing some mo'."

Letitia, only half appeased, shook her head. "My singin' 'pears ter raise harnts, or the devils, or suthin', ter-night. I can't sing no mo' with sech white queer faces ter peek through the window at me."

All her sparkle seemed quenched somehow; the airy wings of her wit were folded and trailing, and she was afoot, as it were, in the dust.

This perception, subtly realized, emboldened Baker Anderson to perpetrate in his turn a small jest at the expense of his late tormentor.

"Oh, ye mought ez well sing," he said, in a humorous, callow growl, and with an awkward wag of his square head. "I reckon ye never see nobody at the winder, 'ceptin' mebbe 'twar Fee Guthrie, 'shamed ter kem a-visitin' ye every night, so he mus' hev a look at ye whilst singin', through the winder—he 'lows ye be so powerful pritty." And he grinned broadly in the pride of this achievement.

For Felix Guthrie had repeatedly made one of the small party, talking chiefly about his obdurate soul, resistant to conversion, much as if it were an obstinate mule, until a late bedtime turned his steps from the door. But Letitia was neither discomfited nor roused by this unprecedented conversational effort on the part of the shy Baker. She only replied, in a dull, spiritless tone, "'Twarn't Fee."

Her eyes, their fine color still asserted in the glow of the red embers, had in them a certain wonder, a sentiment of pain, a touch of fear. The boy's words had given direction to her thoughts. Felix Guthrie would not have lingered to see her sing—he knew but vaguely that her face charmed him. He had no adequate sense of its beauty. She herself had learned it only in another man's eyes—so loath they were to leave it, so fired with some subtle enthusiasm for it. He could look at her silently for hours; but surely, she thought, she could not have fancied in that sinister apparition at the window any resemblance to him. And why should he linger without and peer in at the fireside group when the door would have opened willingly? It was not he; but who was it? And this mystery bore her company into the dull, dead hours. She could not sleep; her eyes were open, and staring into the darkness long, long after slumber had enwrapped all others of the household. She was not restless, only wakeful, as if she should never sleep again. She marked all the successive changes of the night. A long time a cricket shrilled and shrilled in some cranny of the room, and at last was weary, and so grew mute. An owl screamed once without, and was heard no more. Occasionally the dogs, who slept under the house, stirred and wheezed and changed their posture, bumping their heads against the floor as they moved, and were still again. The wind roved for a while listlessly about the garden bushes, and at last was lulled amongst them. And then ensued a hush so intense, so prolonged, that it weighed upon her senses, alert to catch and distinguish some sound that might break it. Naught. Not even the ashes crumbled in the wide chimney-place, where they covered the embers. So deep was the slumber of Adelaide beside her, of Moses in his crib, that they hardly seemed to breathe. Darkness unbroken and silence absolute. Thus might she feel, she thought, without sound or light, if perchance she should wake some time in her grave, after she had lain five centuries, say, quite dead; as the Little People might feel, stirred to some merely mechanical sensation of falling to dust, in those quaint coffins that had become a curiosity, bereft of human significance, of fraternal sanctity, so old, so queer they were. Thus they felt, no doubt, in the long pauses of the centuries while they waited for the judgment.

And with a sudden fear of a dull numbness stealing over her, she roused herself to a sitting posture, and slipped from the high piles of the thick feather-bed to the floor. Her bare feet were noiseless as she crossed the room and sat down in a rocking-chair. The stones of the hearth were warm yet, and pleasant to the touch. She heard the dogs stir once again, and a young horse that was at liberty without trot slowly around the cabin.

What sort of lives did those Little People lead here? she began to wonder anew. Was the grass so fine and soft and green in their day as now? Did the flowers bloom, and the sun shine, and the earth grow so fair of face in the long summer-time that the thought of death became inexpressibly repugnant, and one might wish it afar off, long, long to wait on this sweet existence? O Little People, that it should have come at last! O Little People, to lie so long and wait in gloom!

Somehow the thought of the eventless passing of centuries to them gave her a more adequate idea of the quietus of death—its insoluble change. She felt stifling. She rose to her feet, opened the batten shutter near at hand, and looked out upon the night. The moon had risen; she had hardly expected to see it there, hanging in the gorge of the mountains above the falls. Melancholy and waning it was. She had never heard that it was a dead, burnt-out world of spent fires; she thought it of this life, and she welcomed the sight. Stars were out, and the clouds all gone. The dank breath of herbage, sodden with rain, came to her; the mists were barely visible, hovering above the dark ravines. The shadows were long. She saw the horse whose hoof-beats she had heard, not drowsing, but standing beside a clump of bushes, his ears alert, his motionless head turned intently toward the mountains. The sound of the cataract was only a dull monotone, as if it slept in the dead midnight. And suddenly, as she stood there, with the moonlight on her white gown and her disordered hair and in her lustrous eyes, another sound smote her ear—the sound of a pickaxe striking suddenly upon stone. It came from the pygmy burying-ground. She heard it only once, for it came no more.