ered 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. Returning, he
found the dogs cowering with fear, for one of them had pushed the cloth
off the dead man's face with his nose, and death exercised its weird
dominion over them. They crouched together, whining and tugging at the
traces. With a persuasive word he started them away.

The pursuing, watchful figure followed at a distance, on up the road, on
over the little hills, on into the high hills, the dogs carrying along
steadily the grisly load. And once their driver halted them, and sat in
the grey gloom and dust beside the dead body.

"Where do you go, dwarf?" he said.

"I go to the Ancient House," he made answer to himself.

"What do you get?"

"I do not go to get; I go to give."

"What do you go to give?"

"I go to leave an empty basket at the door, and the lantern that the
Shopkeeper set in the hand of the pedlar."

"Who is the pedlar, hunchback?"

"The pedlar is he that carries the pack on his back."

"What carries he in the pack?"

"He carries what the Shopkeeper gave him--for he had no money and no
choice."

"Who is the Shopkeeper, dwarf?"

"The Shopkeeper--the Shopkeeper is the father of dwarfs and angels and
children--and fools."

"What does he sell, poor man?"

"He sells harness for men and cattle, and you give your lives for the
harness."

"What is this you carry, dwarf?"

"I carry home the harness of a soul."

"Is it worth carrying home?"

"The eyes grow sick at sight of the old harness in the way."

The watching figure, hearing, pitied.

It was Valmond. Excited by Parpon's last words at the hotel, he had
followed, and was keen to chase this strange journeying to the end,
though suffering from the wound in his head, and shaken by the awful
accident of the evening. But, as he said to himself; some things were to
be seen but once in the great game, and it was worth while seeing them,
even if life were the shorter for it.

On up the heights filed the strange procession until at last it came
to Dalgrothe Mountain. On one of the foot-hills stood the Rock of Red
Pigeons. This was the 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 there, and people did not venture
rashly. The land about it, and a