Presently, very far away across the hills, in some valley not to be known,
a dog barked; but the sound just marked the silence, and died down.
The hooded figure down there sat like a Buddha on his rock, motionless,
unwinking, breathing deep and slow. His hands clasped his shins, his chin
was on his knees; he pored into the dark. He sat facing the ridgeway where
it came from the East, and watched the courses of the stars.
Through the window of the hidden hut a faint light glimmered, and within
the open door there was to be discerned a pale diffusion of light. In the
beam of this he sat, cowled in white, but his face was shadowed. He was
like the shell of a man who had died in his thought, and stiffened in the
act of meditation. No relation between him and the rest of the world could
be discerned. He was as far from the sleepers as the dead are.
Yet within him was the patience which comes of wild expectancy. His mind
was as couched as his body for the moment. He had not fasted for years in
the wilderness, and communed with the spirits of the hidden creatures
without learning the secret of their immobility. To him who could speak
with plants and beasts, with hills and trees, the Night itself could
converse.
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