Page:Frank Owen - The Wind That Tramps the World (1929).djvu/17

 only for a single day, and yet somehow he could not bring himself to leave it. There was a wild attraction about the bleak town which he could not define.

For the most part the inhabitants of the City were as poor as church-mice, poorer in truth, for they had only the roughest type of mud-thatched huts wherein to live. By occupation they were shepherds. They watched over thin and sickly flocks of sheep and goats that scraped out a meagre existence from the barren, half-frozen soil. They were filthy-looking individuals, illiterate, stolid, totally lacking in humor. They never bathed. In lieu thereof they smeared their entire bodies with grease. Water was scarce. They did not waste it, besides the grease had a tendency to keep them warm. It kept them odoriferous as well but to people unused to the sweet perfumes of which the inhabitants of the lands lying to the south were so fond, it did not matter. Among all the shepherds, Steppling could not find a single person who understood his language, nor did any of them seem to care. As long as they did not bother him, he did not bother them. Their visions were so limited they were unable to grasp anything beyond their usual scope. When they married, the bride married all the brothers of the family. Naturally in their connubial arrangements most of the brothers were diplomatic enough to be away much of the time.

Steppling was charmed by the spirit of mystery that hovered over everything. He longed to get beneath the mask which each person seemed to wear. They seemed