From on high an eagle also marked the fallen
man, but swiftly soared upward to the crown of the mountain and
disappeared. The spot was lonely enough, yet a track ran within one
hundred yards and it often happened that charcoal burners and their
mules passed that way to the valleys.
None, however, came now as the sun turned westward and the cool
shadow of the precipice began to creep over the little wilderness at
its feet. Many hours passed and then, after night had flooded the
hollow, there sounded from close at hand strange noises and the
intermittent thud of some metal weapon striking the earth. The din
ascended from a rock which lifted its grey head above a thicket of
juniper; and here, while the flat summit of the boulder began to
shine whitely under the rising moon, a lantern flickered and showed
two shadows busy above the excavation of an oblong hole. They
mumbled together and dug in turn. Then one dark figure came out into
the open, took his bearings, flung lantern light on the blazed tree
trunk, and advanced to a brown, motionless hump lying hard by.
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