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The crowd did not seem pleased at my coming, and criticized me in undertones. A terrible smell of decomposed meat filled the air; evidently they had all partaken of a half-rotten pig, and the odour did not seem to trouble them at all. The chief was a tall man, bald-headed, wearing the nambas, of larger size than those of the others, and with both arms covered with pigs' tusks to show his rank.
His fire-wood was cut from his own hedgerows or taken from the half-rotten old sheds which he built at the corners of his fields, and whose planks the farmers carted into town for him, all cut up, and obligingly stacked in his wood-house, receiving in return his thanks.
The road which led to them was barred by the trunk of an old, half-rotten tree, a Breton method of enclosure the name of which may furnish, further on, a digression which will complete the characterization of this region.
To Kenyon's morbid view, there appeared to be a contagious element, rising fog-like from the ancient depravity of Rome, and brooding over the dead and half-rotten city, as nowhere else on earth. It prolonged the tendency to crime, and developed an instantaneous growth of it, whenever an opportunity was found; And where could it be found so readily as here!
Placing his closed hands to his lips, he blew a strong, clear, full whistle, with one or two notes, and was answered by Theodore. At the landing near him was a half-rotten canoe, partially filled with water, and near it was an old paddle. Without a moment's thought, Barton pushed it into deep water, springing into it as it glided away.
It was a billet of wood, a dead branch, worn smooth at the ends, around which were wrapped faded, half-rotten rags of calico. Hugging it for a moment, she handed it to him. He looked at it wonderingly and let it drop, turning his eyes upon her; then, with impatience in her face, she reclaimed it, entered the cave, the boy following, and tenderly placed it in a corner. It was her doll.
Here, at the cradle, in this dark, icy hole, there was not a soul, not a taper, not a hymn, not a flower. Of the infrequent visitors who came thither, none knelt or prayed. All that a few tender-hearted pilgrims had done in their desire to carry away a souvenir had been to reduce to dust, between their fingers, the half-rotten plank serving as a mantelshelf.
The usual colour of this animal is a clear green, spotted with brilliant red. It inhabits the crevices of half-rotten trees as well as humid places; it is sometimes met with in houses, where it occasions great alarm, and where every exertion is made to destroy it speedily. Bontius writes, that the bite is so venomous that, if the part bitten be not cut away or burned, death ensues in a few hours.
You should have marched, like me, with a rope round your neck, travelling to your grave in the living body, and seen their horrid sacramental forms and hangman's ceremonies and then, at every reluctant step, as the struggling feet were thrust forward, to see the infernal machine, on which I was to be elevated, glaring more and more hideously in the blaze of a noonday sun and the hangman's rapscallions watching for their prey and the horrible psalm-singing the cursed twang still rings in my ears and the screeching hungry ravens, a whole flight of them, who were hovering over the half-rotten carcass of my predecessor.
Though this house was roomy and comfortable, as I have said, it was not, by any means, a handsome one. It was composed of dark red brick, with small windows, and thick white sashes; a porch, too none of your flimsy trellis-work, but a solid projection of the same vermillion masonry surmounted by a leaded balcony, with heavy, half-rotten balustrades, darkened the hall-door with a perennial gloom.
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