Laodice, too worn to
observe, sat still; but Momus, with a rush of old fairy-tales in mind,
sprang to her side and seized her arm. His alarmed eyes searched the
dark landscape for whatever visitation it had to reveal.
There was the rush of countless hoof-beats and a low cloud of dust
obscured the crest of the hill just above them. The soft tremolo of
multitudinous bleating came out of it. The quick excited bark of a
fresh Natolian sheep-dog wakened an echo in one of the ravines through
a hill on the opposite side of the road, while strong and insistent
and happy the young cry preceded this sudden animation in the
wilderness.
There was a fall of gravel on the slope over their heads and the next
instant a fourteen-year-old boy descended upon the pair in a fall of
earth, his sandaled feet planted one ahead of the other, his bare arms
thrown above his head as he balanced himself, his long, stiff,
crinkled black locks blowing backward, his face bright with the eager
enjoyment of his simple feat.
After him came a veritable avalanche of Syrian sheep, scrambling to
right and left as they parted behind Momus and Laodice and eddying
around the young shepherd who stopped at seeing the pair. His yell
died away at once, though the effort of sliding down a frozen, rocky
slope had not interfered with a single note.
He might well have been a young satyr, fresh from the groves of
Achaia, with his big, serious mouth and its range of glittering teeth,
his shining deer-like eyes, wide apart, his faun curls low on his
forehead, his big head set on a short neck, his shoulders yet
childish, his slim brown body half smothered in skins, half bare as he
was born, his large hard hand gripping a crook of horn and wood.
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