to Indian legends. At one time or another every person who had come
to the village visited The Stone. Colossal as it was, the real base
on which its weight rested was actually very small: the view from the
village had not been all deceitful. It is possible, indeed, that at
one time it had really rocked, and that the rocking had worn for it a
shallow cup, or socket, in which it poised. The first man who came to
Purple Valley prospecting had often stopped his work and looked at The
Stone in a half-fear that it would spring upon him unawares. And yet he
had as often laughed at himself for doing so, since, as he said, it must
have been there hundreds of thousands of years. Strangers, when they
came to the village, went to sleep somewhat timidly the first night of
their stay, and not infrequently left their beds to go and look at The
Stone, as it hung there ominously in the light of the moon; or listened
towards it if it was dark. When the moon rose late, and The Stone
chanced to be directly in front of it, a black sphere seemed to be
rolling into the light to blot it out.

But none who lived in the village looked upon The Stone in quite the
same fashion as did that first man who had come to the valley. He had
seen it through three changing seasons, with no human being near him,
and only occasionally a shy, wandering elk, or a cloud of wild ducks
whirring down the pass, to share his companionship with it. Once he had
waked in the early morning, and, possessed of a strange feeling, had
gone out to look a The Stone. There, perched upon it, was an eagle; and
though he said to himself that an eagle's weight was to The Stone as a
feather upon the world, he kept his face turned towards it all day;
for all day the eagle stayed. He was a man of great stature and immense
strength. The thews of his limbs stood out like soft unbreakable steel.
Yet, as if to cast derision on his strength and great proportions, God
or Fate turned his bread to ashes, gave failure into his hands where he
hugely grasped at fortune, and hung him about with misery. He discovered
gold, but others gathered it. It was his daughter that went mad, and
gave birth to a dead child in fearsome thought of The Stone. Once,
when he had gone over the hills to another mining field, and had been
prevented from coming back by unexpected and heavy snows, his wife was
taken ill, and died alone of starvation, because none in the village
remembered of her and her needs. Again,