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Again the mutum whistle drifted away. Again no answer came. For a short distance farther the file continued its march. Then, in a small opening where the uptorn roots of a tree rose like a wall at one side, it halted. "The place of meeting," Pedro said. All peered around. None saw anything but the upstanding roots, the forest jumble, the misty serpentine lianas.
Before their eyes, without a breath of wind, the hugh beech solemnly bowed itself and with a great roar of branches, whipping and crushing the trees about, it fell, its full length thundering on the ground, a great mat of shaggy roots uptorn, leaving an open wound in the stony mountain soil. Then, in a minute, it was all as still as before. Paul was scared almost to death.
In some parts the traces were quite fresh, the rocks being rent and uptorn in a wonderful way; and, in one place, we passed the ground where two villages had been entirely overwhelmed by an avalanche, the entire population of twenty-five having been killed in the ruins.
Thereafter they came on a great beaten place high up in the valley, and they thought it was as if strong wrestling had gone on there; for that all about the stones had been uptorn and the earth withal; now they looked closely and saw where Glam lay a little way therefrom; he was dead, and as blue as hell, and as great as a neat.
The other flowers thought she was dead, and the Poppy herself believed that she should never see the light of another morning; but just before the day was gone, the lady walked again into the garden accompanied by her husband; and what do you suppose the other flowers thought? without noticing one of them, the lady walked directly to the Poppy, lifted her head from the ground, and leaned it against the frame which supported the proud Carnation, and then, with her white hands, replaced the loosened earth about her half uptorn roots.
Not that I liked changes, for heart vines bleed freely when uptorn, and friendship's stocks cannot be bought on margin. But my heart was heavy, and St. Cuthbert's had been sorely wounded. Therefore, when the South Carolina church opened correspondence with me regarding their vacant pulpit, I lent an attentive ear.
We had scarcely housed ourselves when a tremendous storm of rain and wind commenced, accompanied with thunder and lightning, which continued without much interruption for several hours, and the effects of which were visible in our journey of the following day, the streams over which we passed being much swollen, and several trees lying uptorn by the wayside.
Faster still they went, up hill and down hill, leaping fallen trees, flying across the hollows made by the uptorn roots, swimming swollen streams, while the priest knelt on the saddle, holding the Viaticum high above the rushing water which dashed over his knees.
On one side of the road an oak tree had been uptorn in a wind-storm; the roots, carrying a great mass of earth with them, were thrust high in the air, while the bole and leafless branches lay prone along the ground. This served as a break in the density of the forest, and the white moonshine possessed the vacant space.
The "unimaginable touch of Time" gives Chella its peculiar charm: the aged fig-tree clamped in uptorn tiles and thrusting gouty arms between the arches; the garlanding of vines flung from column to column; the secret pool to which childless women are brought to bathe, and where the tree springing from a cleft of the steps is always hung with the bright bits of stuff which are the votive offerings of Africa.
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