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CHAPTER VI
THE SEXTON'S COTTAGE
We had been for some time walking over a rocky moorland covered with dry plants and mosses, when I descried a little cottage in the farthest distance. The sun was not yet down, but he was wrapt in a gray cloud. The heath looked as if it had never been warm, and the wind blew strangely cold, as if from some region where it was always night.
' Here we are at last! ' said the raven. ' What a long way it is ! In half the time I could have gone to Paradise and seen my cousin—him, you remember, who never came back to Noah ! Dear ! dear! it is almost winter!'
' Winter ! ' I cried; l it seems but half a day since we left home !'
' That is because we have travelled so fast,' answered the raven. In your world you cannot pull up the plumb-line you call gravitation, and let the world spin round under your feet! But here is my wife's house ! She is very good to let me live with her, and call it the sexton's cottage!'
But where is your churchyard—your cemetery— where you make your graves, I mean ?' said I, seeing nothing but the flat heath.
The raven stretched his neck, held out his beak
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