When Valmond Came to Pontiac, Complete

o a spot where a crimson light showed beyond a little hill. He halted a moment, as if to think and listen, then crawled up the bank and looked down. Beside a still smoking lime-k

rst pausing to listen a mo

soft, crooning call. Low growls of dogs came in q

r the shoulders, halters, and traces; called to them sharply to be quiet, and, keeping hold of their collars, led them out into the night. He paused to listen again. Presently he drove the dogs across the road, and attached them to a flat vehicle, without wheels or runners, us

body, he bore it in his huge arms to the stoneboat: a midget carrying a giant. He covered up the face, and, returning to the shed, placed his coat against the boards to deaden the sound, and hammered them tight again with a stone, after having straightened the grass about. R

e hills, on into the high hills, the dogs carrying along steadily the grisly load. And

ou go, dwar

nt House," he made

do you

o to get; I

you go

door, and the lantern that the Shopk

e pedlar,

that carries the

ies he in

keeper gave him-for he ha

e Shopkeep

is the father of dwarfs and a

he sell,

and cattle, and you give y

his you ca

e the harnes

rth carry

at sight of the old

figure, hea

e end, though suffering from the wound in his head, and shaken by the awful accident of the evening. But, as he said to himself;

he dwarf's secret resort, where no one ever disturbed him; for the Little Good Folk of the Scarlet Hills (of whom it was rumoured, he had come) held revel the

other like a vast violet sea, and, in turn, the tiny earth-waves on each separate hill swelled into the larger harmony. At the foot of a steep precipice was the whirlpool from which Parpon, at great risk, had rescued the fat

e 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 elus

ned faint, and drew his cloak about him as if he were cold; for

ruce, the dwarf drew the body over, and lowered it slowly, awkwardly, into the grave. Th

d those we love die by our own hands. But no, I lie; I did not love thee, thou wert so ugly and wild and cruel. Poor

no one to wish thee speed to the Ancient House? Art thou tossed away like an old shoe, and no one to say, The Shoemaker that made thee must

ut into the high hills like

pped quickly forward. The dogs, seeing him, barked, and the

to mourn him, Parp

augh of singular wildness, his face twitched, tears rushed down his chee

hast come to the burial of a fool. But he had a mother-yes, yes, a mother! All fools have mothers, and th

e earth, but Valmond p

is is for me." And he

, for they had talked long. At the foot of the hills they lo