saw."

"Because when this roof is gilded most, then you stay here within."

"The hottest, weariest hour of day, you mean? Sir, the sun gilds not
this roof. It leaked so, brother newly shingled all one side. Did you
not see it? The north side, where the sun strikes most on what the rain
has wetted. The sun is a good sun; but this roof, in first scorches,
and then rots. An old house. They went West, and are long dead, they
say, who built it. A mountain house. In winter no fox could den in it.
That chimney-place has been blocked up with snow, just like a hollow
stump."

"Yours are strange fancies, Marianna."

"They but reflect the things."

"Then I should have said, 'These are strange things,' rather than,
'Yours are strange fancies.'"

"As you will;" and took up her sewing.

Something in those quiet words, or in that quiet act, it made me mute
again; while, noting, through the fairy window, a broad shadow stealing
on, as cast by some gigantic condor, floating at brooding poise on
outstretched wings, I marked how, by its deeper and inclusive dusk, it
wiped away into itself all lesser shades of rock or fern.

"You watch the cloud," said Marianna.

"No, a shadow; a cloud's, no doubt--though that I cannot see. How did
you know it? Your eyes are on your work."

"It dusked my work. There, now the cloud is gone, Tray comes back."

"How?"

"The dog, the shaggy dog. At noon, he steals off, of himself, to change
his shape--returns, and lies down awhile, nigh the door. Don't you see
him? His head is turned round at you; though, when you came, he looked
before him."

"Your eyes rest but on your work; what do you speak of?"

"By the window, crossing."

"You mean this shaggy shadow--the nigh one? And, yes, now that I mark
it, it is not unlike a large, black Newfoundland dog. The invading
shadow gone, the invaded one returns. But I do not see what casts it."

"For that, you must go without."

"One of those grassy rocks, no doubt."

"You see his head, his face?"

"The shadow's? You speak as if _you_ saw it, and all the time your eyes
are on your work."

"Tray looks at you," still without glancing up; "this is his hour; I see
him."

"Have you then, so long sat at this mountain-window, where but clouds
and, vapors pass, that, to you, shadows are as things, though you speak
of them as of phantoms; that, by familiar knowledge, working like a
second sight, you can, without looking for them, tell just where they
a