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- 549
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T07:57:55.409Z
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- text
- and then rots. An old house. They went West, and are long dead, they
say, who built it. A mountain house. In winter no fox could den in it.
That chimney-place has been blocked up with snow, just like a hollow
stump.”
“Yours are strange fancies, Marianna.”
“They but reflect the things.”
“Then I should have said, ‘These are strange things,’ rather than,
‘Yours are strange fancies.’”
“As you will;” and took up her sewing.
Something in those quiet words, or in that quiet act, it made me mute
again; while, noting, through the fairy window, a broad shadow stealing
on, as cast by some gigantic condor, floating at brooding poise on
outstretched wings, I marked how, by its deeper and inclusive dusk, it
wiped away into itself all lesser shades of rock or fern.
“You watch the cloud,” said Marianna.
“No, a shadow; a cloud’s, no doubt—though that I cannot see. How did
you know it? Your eyes are on your work.”
“It dusked my work. There, now the cloud is gone, Tray comes back.”
“How?”
“The dog, the shaggy dog. At noon, he steals off, of himself, to change
his shape—returns, and lies down awhile, nigh the door. Don’t you see
him? His head is turned round at you; though, when you came, he looked
before him.”
“Your eyes rest but on your work; what do you speak of?”
“By the window, crossing.”
“You mean this shaggy shadow—the nigh one? And, yes, now that I mark
it, it is not unlike a large, black Newfoundland dog. The invading
shadow gone, the invaded one returns. But I do not see what casts it.”
“For that, you must go without.”
“One of those grassy rocks, no doubt.”
“You see his head, his face?”
“The shadow’s? You speak as if _you_ saw it, and all the time your eyes
are on your work.”
“Tray looks at you,” still without glancing up; “this is his hour; I
see him.”
“Have you then, so long sat at this mountain-window, where but clouds
and, vapors pass, that, to you, shadows are as things, though you speak
of them as of phantoms; that, by familiar knowledge, working like a
second sight, you can, without looking for them, tell just where they
are, though, as having mice-like feet, they creep about, and come and
go; that, to you, these lifeless shadows are as living friends, who,
though out of sight, are not out of mind, even in their faces—is it
so?”
“That way I never thought of it. But the friendliest one, that used to
soothe my weariness so much, coolly quivering on the ferns, it was
taken from me, never to return, as Tray did just now. The shadow of a
birch. The tree was struck by lightning, and brother cut it up. You saw
the cross-pile out-doors—the buried root lies under it; but not the
shadow. That is flown, and never will come back, nor ever anywhere stir
again.”
Another cloud here stole along, once more blotting out the dog, and
blackening all the mountain; while the stillness was so still, deafness
might have forgot itself, or else believed that noiseless shadow spoke.
“Birds, Marianna, singing-birds, I hear none; I hear nothing. Boys and
bob-o-links, do they never come a-berrying up here?”
“Birds, I seldom hear; boys, never. The berries mostly ripe and
fall—few, but me, the wiser.”
“But yellow-birds showed me the way—part way, at least.”
“And then flew back. I guess they play about the mountain-side, but
don’t make the top their home. And no doubt you think that, living so
lonesome here, knowing nothing, hearing nothing—little, at least, but
sound of thunder and the fall of trees—never reading, seldom speaking,
yet ever wakeful, this is what gives me my strange thoughts—for so you
call them—this weariness and wakefulness together Brother, who stands
and works in open air, would I could rest like him; but mine is mostly
but dull woman’s work—sitting, sitting, restless sitting.”
“But, do you not go walk at times? These woods are wide.”
- title
- Chunk 9