walls
were adorned with very old-looking frescoes that were equally innocent
of perspective and reticence: the floor was of tessellated bronze. In
each corner Manuel found, set upright, a many-storied umbrella of the
kind used for sacred purposes in the East: each of these had a silver
handle, and was worked in nine colors. But most important of all, so
Manuel had been told, was the pumpkin which stood opposite to the
doorway.

Manuel kindled a fire, and prepared the proper kind of soup: and at
sunset he went to the window of the hut, and cried out three times that
supper was ready.

One answered him, "I am coming."

Manuel waited. There was now no sound in the forest: even the few birds
not yet gone south, that had been chirping of the day's adventures, were
hushed on a sudden, and the breeze died in the tree-tops. Inside the hut
Manuel lighted his four candles, and he disposed of one under each
umbrella in the prescribed manner. His footsteps on the bronze flooring,
and the rustling of his garments as he went about the hut doing what was
requisite, were surprisingly sharp and distinct noises in a vast silence
and in an illimitable loneliness.

Then said a thin little voice, "Manuel, open the door!"

Manuel obeyed, and you could see nobody anywhere in the forest's dusk.
The twilit brown and yellow trees were still as paintings. His horse
stood tethered and quite motionless, except that it was shivering.

One spoke at his feet. "Manuel, lift me over the threshold!"

Dom Manuel, recoiling, looked downward, and in the patch of candlelight
between the shadows of his legs you could see a human head. He raised
the head, and carried it into the hut. He could now perceive that the
head was made of white clay, and could deduce that the Misery of earth,
whom some call Beda, and others Kruchina, had come to him.

"Now, Manuel," says Misery, "do you give me my supper."

So Manuel set the head upon the table, and put a platter of soup before
the head, and fed the soup to Misery with a gold spoon.

When the head had supped, it bade Manuel place it in the little bamboo
cradle, and told Manuel to put out the lights. Many persons would not
have fancied being alone in the dark with Misery, but Manuel obeyed. He
knelt to begin his nightly prayer, but at once that happened which
induced him to desist. So without his usual divine invocation, Dom
Manuel lay down upon the bronze floor of the hut, beneath one of the
tall umbrellas