Soon after
he raised his carving and laid it across the man's knee.
"Yes, I will tell you," he muttered; "I will tell you all about it."
He put his finger on the grotesque little mannikin at the bottom (ah! that
man who believed nothing, hoped nothing, felt nothing; how he loved him!),
and with eager finger the fellow moved upward, explaining over fantastic
figures and mountains, to the crowning bird from whose wing dropped a
feather. At the end he spoke with broken breath--short words, like one who
utters things of mighty import.
The stranger watched more the face than the carving; and there was now and
then a show of white teeth beneath the moustaches as he listened.
"I think," he said blandly, when the boy had done, "that I partly
understand you. It is something after this fashion, is it not?" (He
smiled.) "In certain valleys there was a hunter." (He touched the
grotesque little figure at the bottom.) "Day by day he went to hunt for
wild-fowl in the woods; and it chanced that once he stood on the shores of
a large lake. While he stood waiting in the rushes for the coming of the
birds, a great shadow fell on him, and in the water he saw a reflection.
He looked up to the sky; but the thing was gone. Then a burning desire
came over him to see once again that reflection in the water, and all day
he watched and waited; but night came and it had not returned.
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