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"Oh, it is only that brown donkey that cruises about here. She will break her neck in one of the pits some day." "Not she. She is not such an ass." These three melted into the night, going their rounds; and now nothing is left in sight but a thousand cones of snow, and the donkey paddling carefully among the pits. Craake!

But a gray thrush took up the brighter view; otock otock tock! o tuee o o! o tuee oo! o chio chee! o chio chee! sang the thrush, with a decision as well as a melody that seemed to say: "Ah! but I am sure of it; I am sure, I am sure, wake up, joy! joy!" From that moment there was no more craake.

In a few minutes the friends were actually fast asleep again, lying silent as the vast camp lay beneath the silver stars. Craake! And now it was cold, much colder than before, darker, too, no moon now, only the silver stars; it makes one shiver. Nature seemed to lie stark and stiff and dead, and that accursed craake her dirge. All tended to shivering and gloom. Yet a great event approached.

Then somehow rocks and forest and tents seemed less indistinct in shape; outlines peeped where masses had been. Jug! jug! went a bird with a sweet jurgle in his deep throat. Craake! went the ill-omened one directly, disputing the last inch of nature.

Craake! They put up their tent again. The patrol came panting back. "He has got off but he carried some of our lead in him. Go to bed, captain, we won't leave your tent all night." Robinson and George lay down again thus guarded. The patrol sat by the tent. Two slept, one loaded the arms again and watched.

Craake! A single event, a thousand times weightier to the world, each time it comes, than if with one fell stroke all the kingdoms of the globe became republics and all the republics empires, so to remain a thousand years. An event a hundred times more beautiful than any other thing the eye can hope to see while in the flesh, yet it regaled the other senses, too, and blessed the universal heart.

His hand is inside the tent he finds the opening and winds like a serpent into the tent. Craake! BLACK WILL no sooner found himself inside the tent than he took out a dark lantern and opened the slide cautiously. There lay in one corner the two men fast asleep side by side. Casting the glare around he saw at his feet a dog with a chain round him. It startled him for a moment but only for a moment.

Before this prodigious event came its little heralds sweeping across the face of night. First came a little motion of cold air it was dead-still before; then an undefinable freshness; then a very slight but rather grateful smell from the soil of the conscious earth. Next twittered from the bush one little hesitating chirp. Craake! went the lugubrious quail, pooh-poohing the suggestion.