To the dwarf it was his other world, his real home; for here he lived his own life, and it was here he had brought his ungainly dead, to give it housing.
The dogs drew up the grim cargo to a plateau near the Rock of Red Pigeons, and, gathering sticks, Parpon lit a sweet-smelling fire of cedar.

Then he went to the hut, and came back with a spade and a shovel.
At the foot of a great pine he began to dig.

As the work went on, he broke into a sort of dirge, painfully sweet.

Leaning against a rock not far away, Valmond watched the tiny man with the long arms throw up the soft, good-smelling earth, enriched by centuries of dead leaves and flowers.

The trees waved and bent and murmured, as though they gossiped with each other over this odd gravedigger.