Or I looked
down into the white-and-black valley that was utterly motionless and
beyond life, a hollow sarcophagus.
Nothing stirred the whole day--no plume fell off the shrubs, the valley
was as abstracted as a grove of death. I looked over at the tiny,
half-buried farms away on the bare uplands beyond the valley hollow, and
I thought of Tible in the snow, of the black witch-like little Mrs.
Goyte. And the snow seemed to lay me bare to influences I wanted to
escape.
In the faint glow of the half-clear light that came about four o'clock in
the afternoon, I was roused to see a motion in the snow away below, near
where the thorn trees stood very black and dwarfed, like a little savage
group, in the dismal white. I watched closely. Yes, there was a flapping
and a struggle--a big bird, it must be, labouring in the snow. I
wondered. Our biggest birds, in the valley, were the large hawks that
often hung flickering opposite my windows, level with me, but high above
some prey on the steep valleyside. This was much too big for a hawk--too
big for any known bird. I searched in my mind for the largest English
wild birds, geese, buzzards.
Still it laboured and strove, then was still, a dark spot, then struggled
again. I went out of the house and down the steep slope, at risk of
breaking my leg between the rocks. I knew the ground so well--and yet I
got well shaken before I drew near the thorn-trees.
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