I
They Come to a High Place
He was looking down at the most repulsive
old woman he had ever seen. Hers
was the abhorrent fatness of a spider;
her flesh appeared to have the coloring and consistency
of dough. She sat upon the stone pavement,
knitting; her eyes, which raised to his unblinkingly,
were black, secretive, and impersonally
malevolent; and her jaws stirred without
ceasing, in a loose chewing motion, so that the
white hairs, rooted in the big mole on her chin,
twitched and glittered in the sunlight.
"But one does not pay on entering," she was saying. "One pays as one goes out. It is the rule."
"And what do you knit, mother?" Kennaston asked her.
"Eh, I shall never know until God's funeral is preached," the old woman said. "I only know it is forbidden me to stop."
