It struck him as being strangely like a gigantic grave, and that the same idea had occurred to the fantastic dispenser of the withered flowers.

He was still looking at it, when a rustle in the undergrowth made his heart beat expectantly.

A slinking gray shadow crossed the undulation and disappeared in the thicket.

It was a coyote.

At any other time the extraordinary appearance of this vivid impersonation of the wilderness, so near a centre of human civilization and habitation, would have filled him with wonder.