III-XIX

The cold sharpened; the sky, toward evening,
glittered like an emerald; the earth was
black, it resembled a ball of iron spinning
in the diffused green radiance of a dayless and glacial
void. The stream before the Makimmon dwelling
moved without a sound under banked ledges of
ice.

A thread of light appeared against the facade of
the house, it widened to an opening door, a brief
glimpse of a bald interior, and then revealed the
figure of a man with a lantern upon the porch. The
light descended to the ground, wavered toward a
spot where it disclosed the rigid, dead shape of a
dog. An uncertain hand followed the swell of the
ribs to the sunken side, attempted to free the clotted
hair on a crushed skull. The body was carefully
raised and enveloped in a sack, laboriously borne to
the edge of the silent stream.

There it was lost in the dark as the light moved
to where it cast a limited, swinging illumination over
the wall of a shed. It returned to the stiffly distended
sack, and there followed the ring of metal on

[[349]]

p348 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p349w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p350

v?