before dropping into eternal night with the rest of his race.

There the form stood, motionless as the hill beneath. Above the plain
rose the hill, above the hill rose the barrow, and above the barrow
rose the figure. Above the figure was nothing that could be mapped
elsewhere than on a celestial globe.

Such a perfect, delicate, and necessary finish did the figure give
to the dark pile of hills that it seemed to be the only obvious
justification of their outline. Without it, there was the dome
without the lantern; with it the architectural demands of the mass
were satisfied. The scene was strangely homogeneous, in that the
vale, the upland, the barrow, and the figure above it amounted only to
unity. Looking at this or that member of the group was not observing
a complete thing, but a fraction of a thing.

The form was so much like an organic part of the entire motionless
structure that to see it move would have impressed the mind as a
strange phenomenon. Immobility being the chief characteristic of
that whole which the person formed portion of, the discontinuance of
immobility in any quarter suggested confusion.

Yet that is what happened. The figure perceptibly gave up its fixity,
shifted a step or two, and turned round. As if alarmed, it descended
on the right side of the barrow, with the glide of a water-drop down a
bud, 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 new-comer, bearing a burden,