（外文电子版资料）Christopher Stasheff - Coronach of the Bell.pdfVIP

CORONACH OF THE BELL Christopher Stasheff lone, moaning in the wind. There is a pass into that valley, but the sides are sharp and jagged-torn and twisted, blackened granite. means death. Once a clan lived there, when the spruce was quick with resin and fields of maize filled half the valley. There pass between the mountains then, for a granite bridge once joined them. But that bridge was hollow, gutted out by pick, honeycombed into a home for Manninglore. Manninglore, bald and bearded, hunchbacked, stunted, muscle-bound, stooping from his years of toil. Manninglore, born old. The wrinkles of birth never left his face; hair never grew upon his scalp. Changeling! the children called him. not dare protest, for his bandy legs could scarcely run and his bulging arms were much too slow for fighting. So, of course, his bald pate became the target for their mocking slaps-blows which, as Manninglore learned he could but endure. The lesson of his childhood was patience; the companion of his youth was solitude. So, when he was old enough for numbering among the grown men of the clan, and his beard (already white) he set the village at his back and climbed up to the granite bridge between the mountains. Behind a grove of trees he him out a cave, hiding his door from village eyes. There, in the leaf-broken sunlight of the cave mouth, cross-legged and opened his soul to the totem of his clan, the Wind. They grew old, the men and women who had been young with Manninglore. Old and wrinkled, stooped and they looked up to the mountainside with envy-envy, now, and longing; for those who rose before the dawn saw up high upon the granite bridge, leaning on his staff in sunlight, though the village of the clan st