MS-HRC-SB-4-3

[0864] stations were short-lived, for he was still young. [0865] And of
a sudden he is off again, on his wanderings, passing from
light to shadow, from shadow to light, unheedingly.

[0866] When I stop, as just now, the noises begin again, strangely
loud, those whose turn it is. [0867] So that I seem to have again the
hearing of my boyhood. [0868] Then in my bed, in the dark, on stormy
nights, I could tell from one another, in the outcry without,
the leaves, the boughs, the groaning trunks, even the grasses
and the house that sheltered me. [0869] Each tree had its own cry, just
as no two s^whispered alike, when the air was still.

[0870] I heard afar
the iron gates clashing and dragging at their posts and the wind
rushing between their bars. [0871] There was nothing, not even the
sand on the paths, that did not have ^utter its cry. [0872] The still nights
too, still as the grave as the saying is, were nights of storm
for me, clamorous with countless pantings. These I amused myself
with identifying, as I lay there.

[0873] Yes, I got great amusement, when
young, from their so-called silence. [0874] The sound I liked best had
nothing noble about it. [0875] It was the barking of the dogs, at night,
in the clusters of hovels up in the hills, where the stone-
cutters lived, like generations of stone-cutters before them.

[0876] It came down to me in the house where I lay, in the house in
the plain, wild and soft, at the limit of earshot, soon weary.
[0877] The dogs of the valley replied with their gross bay all fangs and
jaws and foam. [0878] From the hills another joy came down, I mean the ^{[⁁] brief[⁁]}
scattered lights that sprang up on their slopes at nightfall,