look (if they notice
that); the first one frightened Amuel, he felt that it might be a
spirit escaped from torture in some dim parlour of the house that he
watched, his nerves were strained and he feared foolish fears. Then
he grew used to them and the sun set then and the aspect of everything
altered and he felt strange fears again. Behind him was a hollow in
the wold, he watched it darkening; and before him he saw the house
through the trunks of the trees. He waited for them to light their
lamps so that they could not see, when he would steal up softly and
crouch by the little back window. But though every bird was home,
though the night grew chilly as tombs, though a star was out, still
there shone no yellow light from any window. Amuel waited and
shuddered. He did not dare to move till they lit their lamps, they
might be watching. The damp and the cold so strangely affected him
that autumn evening and the remnants of sunset, the stars and the wold
and the whole vault of the sky seemed like a hall that they had
prepared for Fear. He began to feel a dread of prodigious things, and
still no light shone in the evil house. It grew so dark that he
decided to move and make his way to the window in spite of the
stillness and though the house was dark. He rose and while standing
arrested by pains that cramped his limbs, he heard the door swing open
on the far side of the house. He had just time to hide behind the
trunk of a pine when the three grim men approached him and the woman
hobbled behind. Right to the ominous clump of trees they came as
though they loved their blackness, passed through within a yard or two
of the postman and squatted down on their haunches in a ring in the
hollow behind the trees. They lit a fire in the hollow and laid a kid
on the fire and by the light of it Amuel saw brought forth from an
untanned pouch the letter that came from China. The elder opened it
with his gristly hand and intoning words that Amuel did not know, drew
out from it a green powder and sprinkled it on the fire. At once a
flame arose and a wonderful savour, the flames rose higher and
flickered turning the trees all green; and Amuel saw the gods coming
to snuff the savour. While the three grim men prostrated themselves by
their fire, and the horrible woman that was the spouse of one, he saw
the gods coming gauntly over the wold, beheld the gods of Old England
hungrily snuffing the savour, Odin, Balder, and Thor, the g