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 CHAPTER XIX

THE DANCE OF DEATH

N this first day of August I was awakened early by something about the hut which I could not understand. It kept shaking, and there was a noise as of something in some kind of indirect contact with it. I only thought of man; and what any one should be doing on this solitary hill at such an hour I could not for the life of me imagine. The shaking and straining, however, continued; so I got up, and, on opening the door, away, with startled looks, rushed two sheep—a dam and her big lamb—who had been rubbing themselves against the iron wires that run from each corner of the roof of my little sentry-box to stakes set in the ground, to which they are fastened in order to strengthen the building. How they stared at me through the thin, damp mists of the morning, petrified at first! and then how wildly they plunged away! I remembered then often to have seen sheep's wool hanging to these wires; and one of them is very much loosened. So there is a little harm done, even by these "woolly fools"; and were they wild creatures, the Philistine mind, which is the great controlling power in everything, would have nothing to set against it. Only the pleasure of killing it is thought worthy to be set in competition against the smallest degree of damage that a wild animal, however 138