Through the open door of one of the rooms Ashe saw the foaming mass,
framed as it were in a window, and almost in the house.
He chose two small rooms looking on the street, and bade Dell get a fire
lit in one of them, a bed moved out, an arm-chair moved in, and as large
a table set for him as the inn could provide, while he took a stroll
before dinner. He had some important letters to answer, and he pointed
out to Dell the bag which contained them.
Then he stepped out into the muddy street, which was still a confusion
of horses, vehicles, and men, and, turning up a path behind the inn, was
soon in solitude. An evening of splendor! Nature was still in a tragic,
declamatory mood--sending piled thunder-clouds of dazzling white across
a sky extravagantly blue, and throwing on the high snow-fields and
craggy tops a fierce, flame-colored light. The valley was resonant with
angry sound, and the village, now in shadow, with its slender, crumbling
campanile, seemed like a cowering thing over which the eagle has passed.
The grandeur and the freshness, the free, elemental play of stream and
sky and mountain, seized upon a man in whom the main impulses of life
were already weary, and filled him with an involuntary physical delight.
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