The next afternoon was one that I have never been able to erase from my
mind, for even more vividly than my earlier impressions of Con Darton,
it marked the wizardry as well as the fearfulness of his power. A
hundred times during that burial service the sound of a banged door and
a rasped voice sounded in my ears and the sight of a tense, hurrying
figure in a black dress and a bumpy red shawl moved before my eyes. The
thin figure was lying there now and over it, his rusty black coat tails
curving in the wind, like wings bent to trap the air, his gray eyes
misty with emotion, hovered the man whose door she had never entered
since that fateful day of Lisbeth's birth. I could not but feel that the
vision of him standing there told the story of his triumphs more grimly
than any recital.
The service began in a sharp, fine drizzle of rain, through which his
voice sang in shifting cadences, now large and full, now drooping to a
premonitory whisper with an undeniably dramatic quality. In spite of
myself the words stirred within me. As he read and spoke he laid aside
the turns of speech that had become his through years of association
with country folk. Almost he was another man.
"Man that is born of woman--"
The words reached down through the overlying structure of thought and
habit.
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