Nevertheless they crept out again and looked at him.

"Do you know that your hair is white?" they said, "that your hands begin to
tremble like a child's? Do you see that the point of your shuttle is
gone?--it is cracked already. If you should ever climb this stair," they
said, "it will be your last. You will never climb another."

And he answered, "I know it!" and worked on.

The old, thin hands cut the stones ill and jaggedly, for the fingers were
stiff and bent. The beauty and the strength of the man was gone.

At last, an old, wizened, shrunken face looked out above the rocks. It saw
the eternal mountains rise with walls to the white clouds; but its work was
done.

The old hunter folded his tired hands and lay down by the precipice where
he had worked away his life. It was the sleeping time at last. Below him
over the valleys rolled the thick white mist. Once it broke; and through
the gap the dying eyes looked down on the trees and fields of their
childhood. From afar seemed borne to him the cry of his own wild birds,
and he heard the noise of people singing as they danced. And he thought he
heard among them the voices of his old comrades; and he saw far off the
sunlight shine on his early home. And great tears gathered in the hunter's
eyes.

"Ah! they who die there do not die alone," he cried.

Then the mists rolled together again; and he turned his eyes away.