low trees.

--The wooden body, clumsy with pain, burst into fragile legs with
absurdly large feet and funny writhing toes; its little stiff arms made
abrupt cruel equal angles with the road. About its stunted loins clung a
ponderous and jocular fragment of drapery. On one terribly brittle
shoulder the droll lump of its neckless head ridiculously lived. There
was in this complete silent doll a gruesome truth of instinct, a success
of uncanny poignancy, an unearthly ferocity of rectangular emotion.

For perhaps a minute the almost obliterated face and mine eyed one
another in the silence of intolerable autumn.

Who was this wooden man? Like a sharp black mechanical cry in the spongy
organism of gloom stood the coarse and sudden sculpture of his torment;
the big mouth of night carefully spurted the angular actual language of
his martyred body. I had seen him before in the dream of some mediaeval
saint, with a thief sagging at either side, surrounded with crisp angels.
Tonight he was alone; save for myself, and the moon's minute flower
pushing between slabs of fractured cloud.

I was wrong, the moon and I and he were not alone.... A glance up the
road gave me two silhouettes at pause. The _gendarmes_ were waiting. I
must hurry to catch up or incur suspicions by my sloth. I hastened
forward, with a last look over my shoulder ... the wooden man was
watching us.

When I came abreast of them, expecting abuse, I was surprised by the
older's saying quietly "We haven't far to go," and plunging forward
imperturbably into the night.