XII

Week after week went by, changelessly fine, so that in the Strath men

began to shake their heads ominously because of the long drought. In the

memory of none had there been an autumn so lovely. For a brief spell, in

mid August, coming indeed with the storm of wind which had helped the

flames utterly to consume the few poor buildings of Anabal Gilchrist on

Tornideon, great clouds had travelled inland from the Atlantic, and had

burst floodingly upon hill and valley. But in less than a week the sky

was clear again, and of a richer, deeper blue. The whole mountain-land

was veiled in beauty.

The woods at the end of October were, other than the pine-forests, a

blaze of glory. Few leaves had fallen, except from the limes and

sycamores, and these sparsely only ... scarce enough to lay a pathway of

flakes of yellow gold before the hinds and fawns that trooped through

the sunlit glades. The innumerable rowan-trees wore fiery hues upon

their feathery foliage: everywhere the scarlet berries suspended in

blood-red clusters against the blue sky or the cool greenness.

The dream, the spell, was not only upon the beautiful green earth. It

lay elsewhere than there, or in the deeps of heaven: elsewhere than on

the quiet waters which slept against the shores beyond the mountains and

slumbered immeasurably toward the ever-receding west, with a soft

moaning only, wonderful and sweet to hear.

For it was upon the heart and in the brain of each of the mountaineers

of Iolair: but most upon Sorcha and Alan.

For them the days had gone past, days of rapt happiness in that golden

weather. Already the world had become to them no more than a dream. They

went to and fro, hushed, upon the hills, each oblivious of all save the

other, all save the ceaseless thrilling wonder of the pageant of the

hours from dawn to moonset. That strange rapture which comes at times

to isolated, visionary dreamers upon the hills, wrought a spell upon

Alan. Scarce less was it upon Sorcha, and that less only, if at all,

because of the second life that she sustained. The "mirdeeay" was a

glamour in their eyes, in their mind, in their heart, from the hour of

the waning star to the coming of night. Not all an evil thing is it to

dream. The world well lost! Ah, shadowy-eyed dreamers that know the

secret wisdom, it is well to dream!

None of the Strath-folk saw them now. The people murmured against them

because of the tragic mystery of the deaths of Torcall Cameron and

Anabal Gilchrist. Little had been learned from Murdo, and none now

encountered Oona or Nial. But a dropped word, a reluctant admission, a

careful evasion, from the shepherd, went far. Hints grew into a legend:

soon a perverted yet not wholly misleading version of the facts became

current.

On the same morning when, from the mountain-sheiling, they had seen the

white mare, screaming in her madness, leap from the precipice of

Sgòrr-Glan, as though full against the sun, Alan and Sorcha learned from

Murdo what had happened. Below all the grief and horror of the double

tragedy, there was one thing not to be gainsaid. The hand of God was

here.

After their first passionate sorrow they whispered this thing the one to

the other. It was ordained. God had wrought thus with the thread of all

their lives. There was none to blame, neither Torcall, nor Anabal, nor

the child Oona, unwitting instrument of the Divine will. _Is duilich

cuir an aghaidh dàn_: Who can oppose Fate, who set himself against

Destiny?

A strange thing, that had a terrifying significance for the

Strath-dwellers, was this: never were the bodies of Torcall Cameron and

Anabal Gilchrist found. The Linn was dragged, the Kelpie's Pool poled

over and over, the lower reaches of Mairg Water were examined under

every shelving bank, or wherever a sunken bole or submerged boulder

might have caught the castaways. No trace was seen anywhere, then or

later. Possibly it was true, what an old man of Inverglas averred, that

there was a slope at the bottom of the Kelpie's Pool, which ran in

beneath a shelving ledge, whence the water poured down a funnel-like

passage into a cavern filled with stalactites, through the innumerable

holes and crannies at the base of which the flow vanished even as it

came.

He had this knowledge, he said, from his father before him, who in the

great drought of the first year of the century had seen the Pool

shrunken so that a man might stand in it and yet not be wet above the

knees. "And the word of my father will not be for doubting," the old

crofter added: "for he lived with God before him till he died, and now

was with his own folk in Flaitheanas itself, praising Himself for

evermore."

Thereafter, as was but natural, the home upon Tornideon being no more,

Alan and Sorcha lived at Màm-Gorm. There was none to dispute their

possession, for Torcall Cameron was without blood-kin, and all that was

his was Sorcha's.

So week after week went by. Even in the Strath the people said: "It was

willed." There was no man nor woman among them, even of those who were

angry with Sorcha that she was not wedded before the

minister--forgetful, always, that it was the minister who had refused to

wed Alan and Sorcha, because of the feud between Torcall and Anabal

(and, though none had inkling of it, because of the sin he knew of that

lay between them, the sin that lived and moved and had its being in the

person of the child Oona)--and still more who were angry with her

because she came never among them, but was as one lost to the world,

and she too with the second life in her, when she ought to be seeing and

talking to older womenfolk--there was none among these who, in his or

her heart of hearts, did not recognise that it is ever an idle thing for

small wings to baffle against a great wind. _It was to be: it would be._

That was the unspoken refrain of all thoughts: the undertone of all

comments.

The tragic end of Anabal Gilchrist, the doom that had fulfilled itself

for Torcall Cameron: what was either but apiece with the passing of the

ancient language, though none wished it to go; with the exile of the

sons, though they would fain live and die where their fathers wooed

their mothers; with the coming of strangers, and strange ways, and a new

bewildering death-cold spirit, that had no respect for the green graves,

and jeered at ancient things and the wisdom of old--strangers whom none

had sought, none wished, and whose coming meant the going of even the

few hillfolk who prospered in the _màchar_, the fertile meadows and

pastures along the mountain bases? _It was to be: it would be._

Among the old there was exceeding bitterness. An angry and a brooding

pain frowned in many hearts. But, alas, what good to meet the

inevitable with wailing? What had to be, surely would be. Old wifeless

men, old childless women, took comfort in that bitter-sweet saying of

the Psalmist: "is iad ìobairtean Dhé spiorad briste"--"_the sacrifice of

God is a broken spirit_."

But, with the harvesting, the Strath-folk forgot for a while the very

existence of the mountain-lovers.

Smitten with the strange rapt elation of their dream, Alan and Sorcha

still went to and fro as though spellbound. Sometimes he herded the cows

alone: as before, Sorcha milked the sweet-breath kine, singing low her

songs of holy St. Bridget or old-world cadences rare and nigh-forgotten

now as the _Fonnsheen_, the fairy melodies once wont to be heard on the

hills and in remote places. But, though apart for a brief while, it was

only to dream the more.

Yet, strange to say, Alan knew in his heart that this could not endure.

It could not be for over long: God, soon or late, lays winter upon the

heart, as well as upon the song of the bird, the bloom of the flower.

Nevertheless, he had no trouble because of this. There is, at times, in

deep happiness, a gloom as of dark water filled with sunlight. While

the glow is there, a living joy, the gloom is no more than the quiet

sorrow of the world.

Often, of late, he had noticed upon the hillside, upon brier and

bramble, fern-covert or dwarf-elder, that indescribable shadow of light,

visible too at full noon in that golden weather as well as at the

passing of the sun: that glow of omen, known of Celtic poets and seers

in far-gone days. The first line of a fragmentary rune, come down from

one of these singers, who walked nearer to nature than does any now

among the sons of men, was upon his lips over and over, because of this

thing:

"_Tha bruaillean air aghaidh nan tom._"

"_There is boding gloom on the face of the bushes._"

Once only the gloom lay upon him, the gloom that is upon the mind as a

dark cloud upon a field of grain. What if ill should have come to

Sorcha?

He turned, and went swiftly home. The gloaming had fallen, and Sorcha

was sitting before the flaming peats, with clasped hands and dreaming

eyes. She was crooning, half breathing, half crooning, a song, low and

sweet against his ear as the noise of a running brook heard in sleep as

one fares by green pastures under a moon strange and new in a strange

land. And the song was one he had not known, not since he was a child,

and heard Morag, the wife of Kenneth, foster-brother of Fergus

Gilchrist, sing it before, in a day of mourning, she brought forth her

firstborn:

"An' O, an' O, St. Bride's sweet song 'tis I am hearing, dearie,

Dearie, dearie, dearie, my wee white babe that's weary,

Weary, weary, weary, with this my womb sae weary,

And Bride's sweet song ye hear it too, and stir and sigh, my dearie!

"Oh, oh, leánaban-mo,

Wee hands that give me pain and woe:

Pain and woe, but be it so,

'Tis his dear self that now doth grow,

Leánaban-mo, leánaban-mo,

'Tis his dear self one day you'll know,

Leánaban-mo, leánaban-mo!

"St. Bridget dear, the cradle show,

My baby comes, and I must go,

Leánaban-mo, leánaban-mo!

Arone!... Arò!

Arone!... Arò!"

He had stood in the shadow, silent, listening with awe and a strange

joy. His heart yearned to go to her, but he knew that a mother's first

tears were in the dreaming eyes, and that it was not for him, nor any

save God, to be seeing them.

So Alan turned, and went up through the dusk to the low green summit of

Cnoc-na-shee, a brief way from the sheiling. And when he was there he

looked and saw nothing in all the light-gloom sky but one star low in

the south--_Reul-na-dhuil_, the star of hope. Peace was in his heart. He

kneeled down and made a prayer for Sorcha, and the child she bore, and

for him too. And when he rose, and went home, and looked back at green

Cnoc-na-shee, he saw there for a moment a figure as of an angel, shining

bright.

Night and day they were alone there. Murdo the shepherd was up at the

high sheiling on Ben Iolair, and rarely came to Màm-Gorm save to help

with the kye, or do what was needed about the steading. Oona, too, was

seldom seen of them; and of late, even she had not always come at

sunrise for the food Sorcha placed for her on the bench by the door each

morning. As for Nial, he was for long seen of none, save Oona, and where

and when that was no one knew.

As October waned, the day of the mountain lovers became more and more a

life of joy. Hand in hand they would sit on the bench in the sun,

happily content: or dream, hand clasping hand, before the glowing peats.

It was in vain that Murdo, fearing "the quiet madness," reproached Alan,

urging upon him that he should go down into Inverglas and see to the

sale of the cattle and the sheep. The young man shook his head, smiled

gently at the shepherd, and once at least murmured these ominous words:

"There is a time for all things, and it is my time to be still. I have

peace."

Sorcha, being heavy with child, could not now walk far, and indeed cared

little to go beyond the door-bench, or, at farthest, to the green slope

of the hillock of Cnoc-na-shee. Her beauty had not waned because of her

trouble. Her eyes had grown more large and beautiful: wonderful stars of

light to Alan always--stars that shone out of infinite depths, wherein

his soul could sink till it reached that ninth wave of darkness which is

the sea of light beating upon the coasts of heaven.

So, ever and again, glad with his joy and ungrievingly gloomed because

of the shadow that day by day wove a closer veil about his spirit, he

not grieving because not in himself knowing the mystery, he went out

upon the hillside or into the forest. Often it was, then, that he heard

the singing of Oona in the woods at sunrise and during the hot noons.

Sometimes now, too, when late-wandering through the forest at gloaming,

he saw afar off the still figure of Nial crouching by the tarn, or

seated with bent head among the flags and rushes of the drought-dried

pools. More than once, as he went home by the remoter glades, he heard

the elf-man chanting wildly among the pines at night.

It was on one such evening that, returning with his mind strangely

troubled because of the soulless man of the woods, and of his futile

quest and the bitter wrong and pity of it, he was met by Murdo with

startling news. Sorcha had had a vision; and, being wrought by it, had

fallen into premature labour. But she was not alone. He, Murdo, had

brought his foster-sister, Anna MacAnndra, back with him from the

clachan by the Ford of the Sheep: for as he had gone down with some

young ewes that noontide he had seen a look like death in Sorcha's face,

so white and drawn was it with sudden pain. Anna, he added, was a leal

friend and dear to Sorcha, so that all was well.

And that night, in truth, the child of their great love was born to

them. A night it was of pain and joy, of agony and rapture. But when at

last the long-waited dawn came--when, as the woman Anna said, there was

no more need to fear, for the death-hour of woman in travail was well

past--there was deep breathing of quiet happiness upon the sleeping

mother, deep slumber of birth-weariness upon the child that lay against

her breast, deep peace in the heart of Alan.

* * * * *

It was not till the eve of that day that Sorcha told him of her vision.

She had been sitting in the sun upon Cnoc-na-shee, when she was amazed

to see three people pass from the forest and make their way up the hill.

Because of the noon-glare she could not discern who they were, though

each seemed vaguely familiar. Dark in the glowing light, their figures

were visible till they reached the ancient stones beside the cairn of

Marsail. There she thought they passed into the long hollow beyond; but,

when she looked again, she saw that they were now four in number, and

that they were coming down the kye-path to Màm-Gorm. Her heart had begun

to waver; but it was not till they were half-way down that she

recognised the white faces of them: Torcall her father and Marsail her

mother, Anabal and her man Fergus. All four walked in peace. And she

heard a thin song in the air, that may have been from them or may have

been behind her: a song that said, "_Beannachd do t'anam is buaidh_,"

"Blessing to thy soul, and victory," "Blessing, blessing to thy soul,

and peace!" But still the spirit in her was strong, for why should she

fear, dead, those whom she had loved, living?

But as they drew nearer she saw the woman Anabal waving her arms slowly

as she advanced, even as the prophesying women of old did before the

Lord; and, so waving, she chanted a rune. And the rune that she chanted

was the _Rune of the Passion of the Mother_, that no man has ever heard

since time was, and that has been in the ears of those women, only, who

are to lose life in the giving of a life unto Life. So, hearing this

rune, she fell sobbing, with the pains already upon her: and, but for

the coming of Murdo with Anna, she would have borne her child on

Cnoc-na-shee, the fairy hill--and who knows but its doom might have been

that of Nial the soulless?

This vision, Sorcha added, she would not have told to any one had she

felt the death-breath enter her as the child was delivered; but now that

the boy was born, and was so fair and lusty, blue-eyed and

golden-haired as his father had been before him when he too was a

breast-babe, and, too, that all was well with her, she told it.

Moreover, sure, no harm could come of a song of peace: and as for the

_Rune of the Passion of Mary_, it was no more than an idle tale, that

saying of Anna MacAnndra's and of other women, that whoso shall hear it

shall surely die within the birth-month.

And because of her smiling lips and loving eyes, and of the fair, lusty

child whose little hands wandered clingingly about the white breast of

Sorcha, Alan believed that the ancient wisdom was an idle tale.

When the dark fell, and pinelogs were thrown upon the redhot peats, the

two talked in low, hushed tones, with eyes that ever sought each other

lovingly--dreamed and talked, whispered and dreamed, far into the night.

Then, with close-clasping arm holding her child to her bosom, as though

in her exceeding weakness--a weakness nigh unto death, now that it

seemed to float up to her from within, rather than descend upon her from

above--she feared her white blossom of love might be taken from her,

Sorcha sank suddenly into drowning sleep.

Sitting by the bedside, with his hand stroking or holding hers, Alan

revolved other thoughts than those of love only.

Passing strange, passing strange, this mystery of motherhood over which

he brooded obscurely. And, truly, who can know the long, bitter travail

of the spirit, as well as the pangs of the body, which many women

endure--except just such a woman, suffering in just that way? Can any

man know? Hardly can it be so. For though a man can understand the agony

of birthtide, and even the long ache and strain of the double life, can

he comprehend the baffled sense of overmastering weakness, the vague

informulate cry against all powers that be--Man, overlord of the womb:

God, overlord of men. How many women have prayed not to Him, but to the

one Pontiff before whom all thoughts bow down, worshipping in dread: to

that shadowy Lord of the veiled face whom some call Death, that Woman of

the compassionate eyes whom others call Oblivion, because of the poppied

draught she gives the weary to drink, and the quiet glooms of rest that

she holds in the hollow of her hand, and the hushed breath of her that

is Forgetfulness.

Thoughts such as these, though in crude words and simple symbols, were

in Alan's mind.

No, he knew: never again could he even listen to men jeering at birth.

He, though he had come to her virginal-pure, yet feared Sorcha's eyes at

times, because--though not knowing for what it was--of the deep-buried

spiritual anathema which, in the gaze of the purest and noblest of

women, affronts the chained brute that is in the man.

Ah, do men know, do men know--many a woman cries in her heart--do men

know that a woman with child dies daily: that she wakes up to die, and

that she lies down to die: and that even as hourly she dies, so hourly

does the child inherit life? Do they know that her body is the temple of

a new soul? What men are they, in any land, who profane the sacred

altars? Death was of old the just penalty of those who defiled the holy

place where godhood stood revealed in stone or wood or living Bread:

shall they go free who defile the temple of the human soul?

"Sure, sure," Alan breathed rather than whispered, with some such

thought as this in his mind, "sure I am the priest of God, and she there

my temple ... and lo, my God!" ... and with that he leaned over and

kissed the little rosy fingers, and the hot tears in his eyes fell upon

Sorcha's breast, so that she stirred in her sleep and smiled, dreaming

that a soft rain was falling upon her out of the Healing Fountain of

Tears that is in the midmost Heaven.

* * * * *

It was at sunrise that the door opened and Oona entered. The child was

wet with dew which glistered all over her as though she were a

new-plucked flower.

"Ah, birdeen, it is you!" whispered Alan softly, lest the sleepers

should wake. "See, I have been dreaming and sleeping all night before

the peats."

Oona stared at the bed, where all she could see was Sorcha's pale face

among its mass of dusky hair.

"Is it true, Alan? That ... over there ... is _that_ true?"

"It is true, dear."

"Are you _sure_ that a baby has come to Sorcha?"

"It is Himself that sent it."

"Alan, has it a soul?"

"A soul?... Yes, sure no evil eye is upon it, to the Stones be it said!

But why do you ask that thing?"

The child sighed, but made no answer, her gaze wandering from Alan

round the room, and then to where Sorcha lay.

"Why do you say that, Oona? It is not a safe thing to say: sure, it is

not a good wishing. Who knows who may be hearing, though I wish evil to

no one, banned or blest!"

"I see no one," Oona began calmly: "I see no one, and how can _no one_

hear? But I will not be for saying an unlucky thing: sure, you know

that, dear Alan. _Happiness be in this house!..._ And, now, I will be

going, Alan, for I...."

"Going? _Hush-sh!_ wait, Oona, wait: sure, you will be wanting to see

the little one?"

"I want to see Nial."

"Why?"

"He must not come ... just now."

"Why?"

"At dawn we went up to the top of the hillock, for the 'quiet people'

are ever away by then, it is said. And we prayed. I prayed, and Nial

said whatever I said. And then, at sunrise, we rose, and went three

times round Cnoc-na-shee south-ways, and each time cried

_Djayseeul!_"[17]

[17] _Deasiul_: "the way of the south [_i.e._ of the sun] (to

you!)" From _deas_, the south, and _seol_, way of, direction. The

common Gaelic exclamation for luck, in the Highlands at any rate.

Many old crofters still, on coming out of a morning, cry

"_Deasiul!_"

"And what was it you would be praying, Oona?"

"That no soul might be in the body of Sorcha's baby."

Alan stared at her, too amazed at first to be angry.

"What madness is this, lassie?"

"Sure it is no madness at all, at all, Alan! It is a good thought, and

no madness.... For ... for why.... There is poor Nial; and when Murdo

met him on the hillside last night, and told him about Sorcha, Nial

found me out by calling through the woods like a cuckoo, and sure a good

way too, for there are no cooaks now; and then he and I hoped the baby

would have no soul ... and...."

"Hush-sh! Hush-sh! Enough! enough! _bi sàvach!_ I am not being angered

with you, because of the good thought that was in your heart. But say

these things no more. Come; look at Sorcha and the child."

With a light, swift step Oona moved across the room. Silently she looked

into Sorcha's face; silently she stood looking awhile at the child.

Alan had no word from her, to his sorrow. Steadfastly she stared; but

breathed no whisper even. Then, with a faint sigh, she turned, moved

like a ray of light across the room, and, before he knew what had

happened, she was gone.

Bewildered at the child going thus quietly away, he went slowly to the

door; but she had already vanished. So small a lass could soon be lost

in that sunlit sea of green-gold bracken.

For some days thereafter he caught at times a faint echo of her singing

in the woods. Once, in a gleaming silver-dusk, he saw the imprint of her

small feet, darkly distinct in the wet dew, underneath the little window

behind which Sorcha lay. But she did not come again.

It was on the eve of the morning that Oona came that Nial also, for the

first and last time, beheld the little Ivor--so called after Ivor, the

brother of Marsail that was Sorcha's mother, the noblest man Alan had

ever known; "Ivor the good," as he was called by some, "Ivor the poet"

by others.

Alan was out, talking to Anna MacAnndra, when Nial stole into the room.

One hope was in his heart: that Sorcha slept.

With gleaming eyes, seeing that this was so, he drew near. The sight of

the little white child, close lain against his mother's bosom, made a

pain in his heart greater than ever the stillest moonlit night had

done--a suffocating pain, that made him tremble.

He drew a long breath. He, too, he knew, had once been small, perhaps

white and sweet, like _that_.

Was it possible that so small, so frail a thing could have a soul? Sure,

it could not be. If not, should he not take it, and keep it by him in

the forest, till the day when it could be mate to him, Nial the

soulless? But if....

His hand touched the skin of the little rosy arm. The child opened its

eyes of wonder full upon him.

They gazed unwaveringly, seeing nothing, it may be: if seeing, heeding

not. Had it cried, even, or turned away its head; but, no, its blue,

unfearing eyes were fixed upon this creature of another world.

It was enough. With a low, sobbing moan he turned and stole unseen from

the room, and so out on the hillside, and past that praying-place of

Cnoc-na-shee, where so vainly he and Oona had urged that which might not

be; and so to the forest, that was the home of the wild fawns, and of

the red fox, and of Nial.

None, save the child Oona, ever saw again the elf-man that was called

Nial the Soulless: none, though Murdo the shepherd averred that, once,

as he passed through the forest in the darkness of a black dawn, he

heard a wailing cry come from a great hollow oak that grew solitary

among the endless avenues of the pines.

* * * * *

It was far within that first month of motherhood, presaged by the secret

rune heard of Sorcha, the _Rune of the Passion of Mary_, that only women

dying of birth may hear: it was within this time that an unspeakable

weakness came upon Sorcha.

Day by day she grew frail and more frail. Her eyes were pools for the

coming shadows of death.

Strange had been their love: strange the coming of it: stranger still

was their joy in the hour of death.

For this thing upbore her, that was to go, and him, that was to stay:

JOY.

Not vainly had they lived in dream. Sweet now was the waning of the

dream into long sleep. Sweet is sleep that will never stir to any

waking: sweeter that sleep which is but a balm of rest.

For they knew this: that they would awake in the fulness of time.

When, for the first time, the doom-word passed her lips, Alan shuddered

slightly, but he did not quail.

"I am dying, dear heart!"

"Sorcha, this thing has been near to us many days. It is not for long."

"And thou wilt look to thine own dark hour with joy?"

"Even so."

"And our legacy to this our child ... shall be ... shall be...."

"It shall be Joy. He shall be, among men, Ivor the Joy-bringer."

No more was said between them, then, nor later.

It was in the afternoon of the day following this that Sorcha died. She

was fain to breathe her last breath on the mountain-side. Tenderly, to

the green hillock by the homestead, Alan had carried her. Soft was the

west wind upon her wandering hands; warm the golden light out of the

shining palaces of cloud whence that wind came.

He was stooping, with his arm upholding her, and whispering low, when,

suddenly, she lifted the little Ivor toward him. Quietly she lay back

against the slope of the green grass. She was dead.

Alan quivered. All the tears of his life rose up in a flood, and

drowned his heart. He could not see the child in his arms; but he did

not sway nor fall. Sorcha strengthened him.

Then silently the wave of grief, of a grief that might not be spoken,

ebbed. Out of the sea of bitterness his soul rose, a rock with the sun

shining upon it.

Slowly he raised the child above his head, till the wind was all about

it, and the flooding glory of light out of the west.

A look of serene peace came into his face: within him the breath of an

immortal joy transcended the poor frailty of the stricken spirit.

When the words that were on his lips were uttered, they were proud and

strong as the fires of the sun against the dawn:

"_Behold, O God, this is Ivor, the son of Sorcha, that I boon unto Thee,

to be, for all the days Thou shalt give him, Thy servant of Joy among

men._"

* * * * *

There was peace that night upon Iolair. But toward dawn--the morrow of

that new, strange life wherein Alan and the child, with Oona mayhap,

were to go forth toward those distant isles where, as Sorcha had seen in

a vision, Ivor's ministry of joy was to be--a great wind arose.

The hills heard, and the moan of them went up before it. The mountains

awoke, and were filled with a sound of rejoicing.

Through the darkness that lightened momently it came down the glens and

the dim braes of bracken. Many waters felt the breath of it, and leaped.

The silences of the forest were as yet unbroken. Unbroken of the wind,

at least: for, faint and far, there rose and fell a monotonous chanting,

the chanting of a gaunt, dwarfed, misshapen figure that moved like a

drifting shadow from pine-glade to pine-glade.

But as dawn broke wanly upon the tallest trees, the wings of the tempest

struck one and all into a mighty roar, reverberatingly prolonged: a

solemn, slow-sounding anthem, full of the awe of the Night, and of the

majesty of the Day, hymning mysteries older than the first dawn, deeper

than the deepest dark.

And after the passing of that great wind the forest was still. Only a

whisper as of the sea breathed through its illimitable green wave.