The cleared space, where the wood had been, stretched away to a line
of trees edging the main road and above it there was a greenish colour
in the sky. There was not a sound but what came from the encampment.
Down there the fire glowed like some enormous and mysterious jewel and
before it figures which had become poetical and endowed with some
haggard kind of beauty passed and vanished. They might have been
employed in the rites of some weird worship and the movements which
were in reality connected with the cooking of some snared bird or
rabbit seemed to have a processional quality. The fire was
replenished, the stew was stirred, there was a faint clatter of tin
plates and a sharp cracking of twigs: a figure passed before the fire
with extraordinary gestures and slid into the night: another figure
appeared and followed its predecessor: smoke rose and a savoury smell
floated on the air.
Suddenly a child wailed and Rose had the ghastly impression that it
was the child who was in the pot.
Cautiously she stepped into the clearing; the dogs barked again and
she ran swiftly, as silently as possible, leaping over the small
hummocks of heath, dodging the brushwood and finding a certain
pleasure in her own speed and in her fear that the dogs would soon be
snapping at her heels. If she did not find Henrietta on the road, she
would go on to Sales Hall. Very high up, clouds floated as though
patrolling the sky; they found in her fleeting figure something which
must be watched.
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