As far as I
could judge, in the clear darkness of the night, this wind was
purely local: perhaps dependant on the configuration of the glen.
At least, it was very welcome to the hot and weary squatters; and
if we were not abed already, the springing up of this lilliputian
valley-wind would often be our signal to retire.
I was the last to go to bed, as I was still the first to rise.
Many a night I have strolled about the platform, taking a bath of
darkness before I slept. The rest would be in bed, and even from
the forge I could hear them talking together from bunk to bunk. A
single candle in the neck of a pint bottle was their only
illumination; and yet the old cracked house seemed literally
bursting with the light. It shone keen as a knife through all the
vertical chinks; it struck upward through the broken shingles; and
through the eastern door and window, it fell in a great splash upon
the thicket and the overhanging rock. You would have said a
conflagration, or at the least a roaring forge; and behold, it was
but a candle. Or perhaps it was yet more strange to see the
procession moving bedwards round the corner of the house, and up
the plank that brought us to the bedroom door; under the immense
spread of the starry heavens, down in a crevice of the giant
mountain these few human shapes, with their unshielded taper, made
so disproportionate a figure in the eye and mind.
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