"A. E. Merritt - The Fox Woman" - читать интересную книгу автора (Merritt A. E)

Title: The Fox Woman
Author: Abraham Merritt
* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *
eBook No.: 0602021h.html
Edition: 1
Language: English
Character set encoding: Latin-1(ISO-8859-1)--8 bit
Date first posted: June 2006
Date most recently updated: June 2006

This eBook was produced by: Richard Scott

Project Gutenberg of Australia eBooks are created from printed editions
which are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright notice
is included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a particular
paper edition.

Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this
file.

This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg of Australia License which may be viewed online at
http://gutenberg.net.au/licence.html


To contact Project Gutenberg of Australia go to http://gutenberg.net.au

The Fox Woman
by

Abraham Merritt
CHAPTER I
THE ANCIENT STEPS wound up the side of the mountain through the tall pines, patience trodden deep
into them by the feet of twenty centuries. Some soul of silence, ancient and patient as the steps, brooded
over them. They were wide, twenty men could have marched abreast upon them; lichens brown and
orange traced strange symbols on their grey stones, and emerald mosses cushioned them. At times the
steps climbed steep as stairs, and at times they swept leisurely around bastions of the mountain, but
always on each side the tall pines stood close, green shoulder to shoulder, vigilant.

At the feet of the pines crouched laurels and dwarfed rhododendrons of a singular regularity of shape and
of one height, that of a kneeling man. Their stiff and glossy leaves were like links on coats-of-mail...like
the jade-lacquered scale-armor of the Green Archers of Kwanyin who guard the goddess when she goes
forth in the Spring to awaken the trees. The pines were like watchful sentinels, and oddly like crouching
archers were the laurels and the dwarfed rhododendrons, and they said as plainly as though with tongues:
Up these steps you may go, and down them--but never try to pass through us!

A woman came round one of the bastions. She walked stubbornly, head down, as one who fights against
a strong wind--or as one whose will rides, lashing the reluctant body on. One white shoulder and breast