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Around this improvised gallows a group of women sat, or rather squatted, in the mud; their ragged shifts and kirtles, soaked through with the drizzling rain, hung dankly on their emaciated forms; their hair, in some cases grey, and in others dark or straw-coloured, clung matted round their wet faces, on which the dirt and the damp had drawn weird and grotesque lines.
Footmarks are stamped over it in all senses, heel to heel, heel to hollow, toe to toe, feet locked, a morris of shuffling feet without body phantoms, all in a scrimmage higgledypiggledy. The walls are tapestried with a paper of yewfronds and clear glades. In the grate is spread a screen of peacock feathers. Lynch squats crosslegged on the hearthrug of matted hair, his cap back to the front.
The almost pulseless lethargy into which she had fallen passed off quickly, and rising up, she pushed back the matted hair from her face, and said, "I know you all think me perverse and unreasonable, and I may be so to some extent; but I will try to do as you wish. I feel as weak in mind and body as a child; and, like a child, I will submit myself to your direction.
Kennedy rushed to the window and slammed it shut, while I seized the key from Michael's pocket, opened the door and called for help. A moment before, on the roof of a building across the street, one might have seen a bent, skulking figure. His face was copper colored and on his head was a thick thatch of matted hair.
I thought myself so but there are moments of adversity which let us into some feelings of our nature, to which we might otherwise remain perpetual strangers. I sought my mother's grave. The weeds were already matted over it, and the tombstone was half hid among nettles. I cleared them away and they stung my hands; but I was heedless of the pain, for my heart ached too severely.
The turbulent clouds, unobstructed for hundreds of miles by either hills or trees, were now hovering over the very sod, and at short intervals vivid, sinuous gleams broke from them, and, serpent-like, went writhing and glistening through the matted grass, while the roar of the thunder made the apprehensive earth tremble perceptibly.
With trembling fingers the Kid did as he was bid, and when after much fumbling he found the button a slim shaft of white light, fell downward upon the upturned face of a man cold in death a little man, strangely garbed, with gold rings in his ears, and long black hair matted in the death sweat of his brow.
"Art hurt, Robin?" inquired the stranger, who is known to us by the name of Walter, now speaking for the first time. Robin shook his matted head in reply. "Something ails thee, man; something must ail thee speak, good Robin."
He could not have passed it previously without notice of its sombre shade and massive boles. He would return a little distance, and look for the path his passage must have made in brushing through the thickets. Brought to a stand again. This time by a small creek gurgling deeply beneath matted shrubs. He had gone wrong must have diverged from his old course.
"The broad moon shone right over it by the time she came to the river; the pike rose up from the other side, and she thought at first that she would have to go back again, cross over the bridge, and so get to it; but, glancing down on the river just as she turned, she saw a little boat fairly gilt and painted, and with a long slender paddle in it, lying on the water, stretching out its silken painter as the stream drew it downwards, she entered it, and taking the paddle made for the other side; the moon meanwhile turning the eddies to silver over the dark green water: she landed beneath the shadow of that great pile of sandstone, where the grass grew green, and the flowers sprung fair right up to the foot of the bare barren rock; it was cut in many steps till it reached the cave, which was overhung by creepers and matted grass; the stream swept the boat downwards, and Ella, her heart beating so as almost to stop her breath, mounted the steps slowly, slowly.
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