and then vanished. The movement had been sufficient to show more clearly
the characteristics of the figure, and that it was a woman's.

The reason of her sudden displacement now appeared. With her dropping
out of sight on the right side, a newcomer, bearing a burden, protruded
into the sky on the left side, ascended the tumulus, and deposited the
burden on the top. A second followed, then a third, a fourth, a fifth,
and ultimately the whole barrow was peopled with burdened figures.

The only intelligible meaning in this sky-backed pantomime of
silhouettes was that the woman had no relation to the forms who had
taken her place, was sedulously avoiding these, and had come thither
for another object than theirs. The imagination of the observer clung
by preference to that vanished, solitary figure, as to something more
interesting, more important, more likely to have a history worth knowing
than these newcomers, and unconsciously regarded them as intruders. But
they remained, and established themselves; and the lonely person who
hitherto had been queen of the solitude did not at present seem likely
to return.




3--The Custom of the Country


Had a looker-on been posted in the immediate vicinity of the barrow,
he would have learned that these persons were boys and men of the
neighbouring hamlets. Each, as he ascended the barrow, had been heavily
laden with furze faggots, carried upon the shoulder by means of a long