Page:Frank Owen - The Wind That Tramps the World (1929).djvu/18

 totally lacking in personality, yet personality of some sort they must have. When they went into their huts did they just pass into blackness like candles blown out? Did they have any home life at all? He doubted it. Were their affections, hopes, desires, loves, all blunted? Did they ever read? It was like being in a dead city. No one approached him. No one talked to him. He seldom heard a human voice for the voices of the people were usually drowned by the frightful screeching of the wind through the mountain passes. Fortunately he had sufficient food with him to last him another month. When that was gone he intended to endeavor to buy food from the natives. When he bought food in what currency could he pay for it? English currency would be of little use among these savage hillsmen. He was outside British domains. The people did not value money. What they gloated over was food. Money was a rather questionable commodity. Although illiterate and dull they were able to appreciate how fundamentally useless gold is after all.

Each day he roamed for hours about the wind swept mountain passes. He climbed to lofty pinnacles almost as sharp as needles. Sometimes he rambled over a table of rock so vast that the greatest giants of legend might have sat down comfortably around it without bumping elbows. Not infrequently he even ventured to walk about the native haunts of the City, where sod-thatched huts were mute testimony of the poverty of the people. But the inhabitants looked at him