To the dwarf it was his other world,
his real home; for here he lived his own life, and it was here he had
brought his ungainly dead, to give it housing.
The dogs drew up the grim cargo to a plateau near the Rock of Red
Pigeons, and, gathering sticks, Parpon lit a sweet-smelling fire of
cedar. Then he went to the hut, and came back with a spade and a shovel.
At the foot of a great pine he began to dig. As the work went on, he
broke into a sort of dirge, painfully sweet. Leaning against a rock not
far away, Valmond watched the tiny man with the long arms throw up the
soft, good-smelling earth, enriched by centuries of dead leaves and
flowers. The trees waved and bent and murmured, as though they gossiped
with each other over this odd gravedigger. The light of the fire showed
across the gorge, touching off the far wall of pines with burnished
crimson, and huge flickering shadows looked like elusive spirits,
attendant on the lonely obsequies. Now and then a bird, aroused by the
flame or the snap of a burning stick, rose from its nest and flew away;
and wild-fowl flitted darkly down the pass, like the souls of heroes
faring to Walhalla. When an owl hooted, a wolf howled far off, or a loon
cried from the water below; the solemn fantasy took on the aspect of the
unreal.
Valmond watched like one in a dream, and twice or thrice he turned faint,
and drew his cloak about him as if he were cold; for a sickly air,
passing by, seemed to fill his lungs with poison.
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