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It was singular to me that the design the old man struggled with oftenest, the smith let pass. I had observed this the more because I became sure that there was no smallest hint of it escaped him, and the suspicion was fixed in my mind by its revelation of a great singularity in the character of Ravenutzi himself.

Time and again I had seen Noche laying out his abalone pearls in a design which, however dearly it was borne within his mind, seemed reluctant in expression. He would place the salient points of his pattern, connecting them by tracings in the sand, and when he had taken the greatest pains with it, startled, would sweep out the whole with his hand. There were times when its preciousness so grew upon him that he would not even commit it to the dust, but formed the delicate outline with his finger in the air.

One of those occasions, when it was full noon, and the tide charged thunderously along the coast, all the Outliers lying up in the windy gloom of the cypresses, I knew by the absorbed and breathless look of him that Noche had accomplished for once the whole of his design. He bent above it crooning in his beard, so absorbed in the complete and lonely joy of creation that he neither saw nor sensed the shifting of the stooped, twisty trunks above him to the form of Ravenutzi.