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Most of the dwellings are lonely and silent: from a few we may hear the reading of some sacred text, or the quiet voice of prayer; but nearly all the sombre life of the scene is collected near the extremity of the village. A crowd of hooded women, and of men in steeple-hats and close-cropped hair, are assembled at the door and open windows of a house newly built.
Up slid the moon, till Main Street was a phantom cloister, the maple boles huge columns casting purple shadows on a milky floor. Fairy lights winked in hooded windows like deep-set eyes, and a soft warm haze lapped round him dreamily, lulling his senses. Joe had left the road-camp and tramped three miles into town. In the dusk he had come upon it unawares; it seemed quite deserted.
The little old crooked, nimble Sister, with the long, pale sheep-face, dropped on her knees beside that prone column of stately womanhood, removed the Mother's hooded mantle, loosened the guimpe and habit, and worked strenuously to revive her, dropping tears. "My beautiful, my poor lamb!" she crooned. "What's come to her? What wicked shadow's black on all of us?
Then the garden vanished altogether, and he stood before a dark porch and a gate beyond which he caught a pale glimmer. And by the porch stood a terrible shape: a hooded skeleton bearing a scythe, with white sockets of fire which had no eyes in them but which were so terrible that no mortal could look on them and live.
Why, just a year ago ! He remembered a black night of storm, when, hooded like a falcon he had ridden without a light on his motorcycle, carrying dispatches from the Argonne, and even as he had ridden, he had felt that high sense of heroic endeavor. On the success of his mission depended other lives, the saving of nations victory !
"Would that I lived in days of yore, When outlaws bold were rife, The days of dagger and of bowl, Of dungeon and of strife. Oh! for the days when forks were not, On skewers came the meat; When from one trencher ate three foes: Oh! but those times were sweet! When hooded hawks sat overhead, And underfoot was straw Where hounds and beggars fought for bones Alternately to gnaw."
And presently the deodars darken the way with a solemn presence, for "These are the Friars of the wood, The Brethren of the Solitude Hooded and grave " their breath most austerely pure in the gradually chilling air.
Anita and I gave him our most friendly smiles. "Thanks." He bowed to Anita with a sweeping gesture. "I will show you over the control room presently." His gaze went to the peak of the bow. The little hooded cubby there was the control room, then. Satisfaction swept me. Then above us in the tower, must surely be the signal room. Would Brotow follow us up? I hoped not.
There was something appalling in the sight to Caius. Each man was placed at exactly the same distance from his fellow; they seemed to stand with heads bowed, and hands clasped in front of their breasts; faces and hands, like their forms, were hooded and muffled. Caius did not think, or analyze his emotion.
Then in his astonishment John Dempsey altogether forgot himself. "Don't be frightened, Mrs. Delane! Why, you've had a faint. But never mind. Cheer up! I'll get you home safe." And Rachel, reviving, opened her heavy eyes to see stooping over her the face of the lad in the hooded cart whom she had last seen in the night of that November snowstorm, two years before.
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