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Reckoning time was not the charcoal-burner's strong point; and the empty hut, the dreary open window-casements in the mouldering wooden walls, the holes in the roof, through which a quantity of snow had drifted into the only room in the deserted house, indicated that no human being had sought shelter here for many a winter.
There is a truss of sweet hay in the loft where you may rest, and to-morrow morning I will be your guide." The King accepted the invitation and went to bed in the loft. Shortly after a son was born to the charcoal-burner's wife. But the King could not sleep.
A prettier spot could not have been found for the purpose; a small plateau, something over an acre in extent, where a charcoal-burner's hut had once stood, lay right at the top of the pass.
I remember well how thy eyes sparkled when thou toldest of the walk toward Le Locle and Neufchâtel; even as a boy I felt at thy words the light mountain air. I rode with thee upon the dizzy height, where the woods lay below us like potato fields. What below arose, like the smoke from a charcoal-burner's kiln, was a cloud in the air.
Pushing his heavy machine ahead of him until he came to a good road, he mounted it, and was soon at the charcoal-burner's shack. There came no answer to his knock, and Tom pushed open the door. The old man was not in. Tom could not send him for help. "My luck seems to be against me!" he murmured. "But I can get something to eat here, anyhow. I'm almost starved!"
But ah! they were altogether built up of smoke, since it arose from no other than a charcoal-burner's kiln, and Petrea had not the smallest desire to make a nearer acquaintance with the hidden divinity of which this smoke was the evidence. The small hut of the charcoal-burner, in the form of a sugar-loaf, stood not far from the kiln, the unbolted door of which was opened by the Assessor.
"What was the old woman like?" asked the king. From Plavacek's description the king knew it was the very same who, twenty years before, had foretold the marriage of the princess with the charcoal-burner's son. After some moments' thought the king said, "What is done is done. But you will not become my son-in-law so easily. No, i' faith!
He reckoned Marcia no better than himself because she, too, was born in slavery and Pertinax not vastly better than himself because he was a charcoal-burner's son. But it did not enter his head just then that he might be capable of making history. Marcia well understood him.
Now one evening the king of that country was hunting near the charcoal-burner's hut. As he passed the door, he heard a sound of sobbing, and being a good-natured man he stopped to listen, thinking that perhaps he might be able to give some help. 'Were there ever two people so unhappy! said a woman's voice. 'Here we are, ready to work like slaves the whole day long, and no work can we get.
Here is still seen the tomb of Rufus, who was brought hither in a charcoal-burner's cart from the New Forest, where the chance arrow of Tyrrel, avenged, in his last hunt, the cruelties of himself and his father on that ground....
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