The dwarf drove the dogs down a lonely side lane to the village, and came to the shed where lay the uncomely thing he had called brother. He felt for a spot where there was a loose board, forced it and another with his strong fingers, and crawled in. Reappearing with the dead body, he bore it in his huge arms to the stoneboat: a midget carrying a giant. He covered up the face, and, returning to the shed, placed his coat against the boards to deaden the sound, and hammered them tight again with a stone, after having straightened the grass about. Returning, he found the dogs cowering with fear, for one of them had pushed the cloth off the dead man’s face with his nose, and death exercised its weird dominion over them. They crouched together, whining and tugging at the traces. With a persuasive word he started them away. The pursuing, watchful figure followed at a distance, on up the road, on over the little hills, on into the high hills, the dogs carrying along steadily the grisly load. And once their driver halted them, and sat in the grey gloom and dust beside the dead body. “Where do you go, dwarf?” he said. “I go to the Ancient House,” he made answer to himself. “What do you get?” “I do not go to get; I go to give.” “What do you go to give?” “I go to leave an empty basket at the door, and the lantern that the Shopkeeper set in the hand of the pedlar.” “Who is the pedlar, hunchback?” “The pedlar is he that carries the pack on his back.” “What carries he in the pack?” “He carries what the Shopkeeper gave him--for he had no money and no choice.” “Who is the Shopkeeper, dwarf?” “The Shopkeeper--the Shopkeeper is the father of dwarfs and angels and children--and fools.” “What does he sell, poor man?” “He sells harness for men and cattle, and you give your lives for the harness.” “What is this you carry, dwarf?” “I carry home the harness of a soul.” “Is it worth carrying home?” “The eyes grow sick at sight of the old harness in the way.” The watching figure, hearing, pitied. It was Valmond. Excited by Parpon’s last words at the hotel, he had followed, and was keen to chase this strange journeying to the end, though suffering from the wound in his head, and shaken by the awful accident of the evening. But, as he said to himself; some things were to be seen but once in the great game, and it was worth while seeing them, even if life were the shorter for it. On up the heights filed the strange procession until at last it came to Dalgrothe Mountain. On one of the foot-hills stood the Rock of Red Pigeons. This was the dwarf’s secret resort, where no one ever disturbed him; for the Little Good Folk of the Scarlet Hills (of whom it was rumoured, he had come) held revel there, and people did not venture rashly. The land about it, and a hut farther down the hill, belonged to Parpon; a legacy from the father of the young Seigneur.