e impressed the mind as a
strange phenomenon. Immobility being the chief characteristic of
that whole which the person formed portion of, the discontinuance of
immobility in any quarter suggested confusion.

Yet that is what happened. The figure perceptibly gave up its fixity,
shifted a step or two, and turned round. As if alarmed, it descended
on the right side of the barrow, with the glide of a water-drop down a
bud, and then vanished. The movement had been sufficient to show more
clearly the characteristics of the figure, and that it was a woman's.

The reason of her sudden displacement now appeared. With her dropping
out of sight on the right side, a new-comer, bearing a burden,
protruded into the sky on the left side, ascended the tumulus, and
deposited the burden on the top. A second followed, then a third, a
fourth, a fifth, and ultimately the whole barrow was peopled with
burdened figures.

The only intelligible meaning in this sky-backed pantomime of
silhouettes was that the woman had no relation to the forms who had
taken her place, was sedulously avoiding these, and had come thither
for another object than theirs. The imagination of the observer clung
by preference to that vanished, solitary figure, as to something more
interesting, more important, more likely to have a history worth
knowing than these new-comers, and unconsciously regarded them as
intruders. But they remained, and established themselves; and the
lonely person who hitherto had been queen of the solitude did not at
present seem likely to return.

III

The Custom of the Country

Had a looker-on been posted in the immediate vicinity of the barrow,
he would have learned that these persons were boys and men of the
neighbouring hamlets. Each, as he ascended the barrow, had been
heavily laden with furze-faggots, carried upon the shoulder by means
of a long stake sharpened at each end for impaling them easily--two
in front and two behind. They came from a part of the heath a quarter
of a mile to the rear, where furze almost exclusively prevailed as a
product.

Every individual was so involved in furze by his method of carrying
the faggots that he appeared like a bush on legs till he had thrown
them down. The party had marched in trail, like a travelling flock of
sheep; that is to say, the strongest first, the weak and young behind.

The loads were all laid together, and a pyramid of furze thirty feet
in circumference now occupied t