But now hope was there none. His doom, his end, were fixed and
changeless. Never more could he be anything but what he was; and
change there could be none till weather and time should have done
their work on him, and he be rotting on the wet earth, a shattered
and worm-eaten wreck.
Day broke--a gloomy, misty morning.
From where he was crucified upon the tree-trunk he could no longer
even see his beloved home, the studio; he could only see a dusky,
intricate tangle of branches all about him, and below the wall of
flint, with the Banksia that grew on it, and the hard muddy
highway, drenched from the storm of the night.
A man passed in a miller's cart, and stood up and swore at him,
because the people had liked to come and shoot and trap the birds
of the master's wooded gardens, and knew that they must not do it
now.
A slug crawled over him, and a snail also. A woodpecker hammered
at him with its strong beak. A boy went by under the wall and
threw stones at him, and called him names. The rain poured down
again heavily. He thought of the happy painting room, where it had
seemed always summer and always sunshine, and where now in the
forenoon all the colors were marshaling in the pageantry of the
Arts, as he had seen them do hundreds of times from his lone
corner. All the misery of the past looked happiness now.
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