Pagina 537 van 896

"Will you wake me, before departing? I have walked two nights

without resting. Let me finish my pipe, and I shall sleep like a

child. Will you wake me?"

"Surely."

The wayfarer smoked his pipe out, put it in his breast, slipped

off his great wooden shoes, and lay down on his back on the heap

of stones. He was fast asleep directly.

As the road-mender plied his dusty labour, and the hail-clouds,

rolling away, revealed bright bars and streaks of sky which were

responded to by silver gleams upon the landscape, the little man

(who wore a red cap now, in place of his blue one) seemed

fascinated by the figure on the heap of stones. His eyes were so

often turned towards it, that he used his tools mechanically,

and, one would have said, to very poor account. The bronze face,

the shaggy black hair and beard, the coarse woollen red cap, the

rough medley dress of home-spun stuff and hairy skins of beasts,

the powerful frame attenuated by spare living, and the sullen and

desperate compression of the lips in sleep, inspired the mender

of roads with awe. The traveller had travelled far, and his feet

were footsore, and his ankles chafed and bleeding; his great

shoes, stuffed with leaves and grass, had been heavy to drag over

the many long leagues, and his clothes were chafed into holes, as

he himself was into sores.