"Would you mind giving me something to smoke?" the carpenter asked. The obscurity caused him to look large and shapeless, though his manner of speaking was bashful and subdued.
"Certainly. Here is a cigarette."
"Christ reward you! Today my wife forgot to bring my tobacco, and my grandfather has strict ideas on the subject of smoking."
"Was it he who departed just now? It was."
As the carpenter inhaled a whiff he continued:
"I suppose that man was beaten to death?"
"He was—to death."
For a while the pair smoked in silence. The hour was past midnight.
Over the defile the jagged strip of sky which roofed it looked like a river of blue flowing at an immense height above the night-enveloped earth, and bearing the brilliant stars on its smooth current.
Quieter and quieter was everything growing; more and more was everything becoming part of the night....