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CHAPTER XIX 
THE DANCE OF DEATH 
ON this first day of August I was awakened early 
by something about the hut which I could not 
understand. It kept shaking, and there was a noise 
as of something in some kind of indirect contact 
with it. I only thought of man; and what any one 
should be doing on this solitary hill at such an hour 
I] could not for the life of me imagine. The shaking 
and straining, however, continued ; so I got up, and, 
on opening the door, away, with startled looks, rushed 
two sheep—a dam and her big lamb—who had been 
rubbing themselves against the iron wires that run 
from each corner of the roof of my little sentry-box 
to stakes set in the ground, to which they are fastened 
in order to strengthen the building. How they 
stared at me through the thin, damp mists of the 
morning, petrified at first! and then how wildly they 
plunged away! I remembered then often to have 
seen sheep’s wool hanging to these wires ; and one of 
them is very much loosened. So there is a little harm 
done, even by these “ woolly fools” ; and were they 
wild creatures, the Philistine mind, which is the great 
controlling power in everything, would have nothing 
to set against it. Only the pleasure of killing it is 
thought worthy to be set in competition against the 
smallest degree of damage that a wild animal, however 
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