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GREEN FIRE 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 Pharais : A Romance of the Isles. 
 
 The Mountain Lovers. 
 
 The Sin-Eater and Other Tales. 
 
 The Washer of the Ford. 
 
 The Lily Leven : A Romance. 
 
GREEN FIRE 
 
 A ROMANCE 
 
 BY 
 
 FIONA MACLEOD 
 
 ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE AND CO. 
 1896 
 
' While still I may, I write for you 
 The love I lived, the dream I knew. 
 
TO 
 
 ESCLARMOUNDO 
 
 Nee sine te nee tecum vivere possum.'— Ovid. 
 
' There are those of us who would rather be with 
 Cathal of the Woods, and be drunken with green fire, 
 than gain the paradise of the Holy Molios who banned 
 him, if in that gain were to be heard no more the 
 earth-sweet ancient song of the blood that is in the 
 veins of youth. . . .' 
 
 1 O green fire of life, pulse of the world ! O Love ! 
 O Youth ! O Dream of Dreams ! ' 
 
 The Annir Choille. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Book First — The Birds of Angus Ogue 
 
 I. 
 
 Eucharis, 
 
 . 3 
 
 II. 
 
 The House of Kerival, . 
 
 . 21 
 
 III. 
 
 Storm, 
 
 . 35 
 
 IV. 
 
 The Dream and the Dreamers, 
 
 . 51 
 
 V. 
 
 The Walker in the Night, . 
 
 . 67 
 
 VI. 
 
 Via Oscura, ..... 
 
 . 97 
 
 VII. 
 
 ' Deireadh gach cogaidh, slth,' 
 
 . 112 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The Unfolding of the Scroll, 
 
 . 123 
 
 Book Second — The Herdsman 
 
 i. Retrospective : From the Hebrid Isles, 
 
 ii. At the Edge of the Shadow, 
 
 hi. Mystery, .... 
 
 iv. In the Green Arcades, . 
 
 v. The Message, 
 
 vi. The Laughter of the King, . 
 
 147 
 174 
 194 
 207 
 223 
 238 
 
 Book Third — The Beauty of the World, 
 
 257 
 
BOOK FIRST 
 THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 
 
Hither and thither 
 
 And to and fro 
 They thrid the Maze 
 
 Of Weal and Woe : 
 
 winds that blow 
 For golden weather, 
 
 Blow me the Birds, 
 
 All white as snow 
 On the hillside heather- 
 Blow me the birds 
 
 That Angus know : 
 Blow me the birds, 
 
 Be it Weal or Woe ! 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 EUCHAMS 
 
 1 Then, in the violet forest, all a-bourgeon, Eucharis said to me : 
 It is Spring.' — Arthur Rimbaud. 
 
 After the dim purple bloom of a suspended 
 Spring, a green rhythm ran from larch to thorn, 
 from lime to sycamore : spread from meadow to 
 meadow, from copse to copse, from hedgerow to 
 hedgerow. The blackthorn had already snowed 
 upon the nettle-garths. In the obvious nests, 
 among the bare boughs of ash and beech, the 
 eggs of the blackbird were blue-green as the 
 sky that March had bequeathed to April. For 
 days past, when the breath of the Equinox had 
 surged out of the west, the missel-thrushes had 
 bugled from the wind-swayed topmost branches 
 of the tallest elms. Everywhere the green 
 rhythm ran. 
 
 In every leaf that had uncurled there was a 
 
4 GREEN FIRE 
 
 delicate bloom, that which is upon all things in 
 the first hours of life. The spires of the grass 
 were washed in a green, dewy light. Out of the 
 brown earth a myriad living things thrust tiny 
 green shafts, arrow-heads, bulbs, spheres, clusters. 
 Along the pregnant soil keener ears than ours 
 would have heard the stir of new life, the in- 
 numerous whisper of the bursting seed : and, in 
 the wind itself, shepherding the shadow-chased 
 sunbeams, the voice of that vernal gladness which 
 has been man's clarion since Time began. 
 
 Day by day the wind- wings lifted a more multi- 
 tudinous whisper from the woodlands. The deep 
 hyperborean note, from the invisible ocean of air, 
 was still audible : within the concourse of bare 
 boughs which wrought against it, that surging voice 
 could not but have an echo of its wintry roar. 
 In the sun-havens, however, along the southerly 
 copses, in daisied garths of orchard-trees, amid the 
 flowering currant and guelder and lilac bushes in 
 quiet places where the hives were all a-murmur, 
 the wind already sang its lilt of Spring. From 
 dawn till noon, from an hour before sundown till 
 the breaking foam along the wild-cherry flushed 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 5 
 
 fugitively because of the crimson glow out of the 
 west, there was a ceaseless chittering of birds. 
 The starlings and the sparrows enjoyed the com- 
 mune of the homestead ; the larks and fieldfares 
 and green and yellow linnets congregated in the 
 meadows, where, too, the wild bee already roved. 
 Among the brown ridgy fallows there was a 
 constant flutter of black, white-gleaming, and 
 silver-grey wings, where the stalking rooks, the 
 jerking peewits, and the wary, uncertain gulls 
 from the neighbouring sea feasted tirelessly from 
 the teeming earth. Often, too, the wind-hover, 
 that harbinger of the season of the young broods, 
 quivered his curved wings in his arrested flight, 
 while his lance-like gaze penetrated the whins 
 beneath which a new-born rabbit crawled, or dis- 
 cerned in the tangle of a grassy tuft the brown 
 watchful eyes of a nesting quail. 
 
 In the remoter woodlands the three foresters 
 of April could be heard ; the woodpecker tapping 
 on the gnarled boles of the oaks, the wild dove 
 calling in low crooning monotones to his silent 
 mate, the cuckoo tolling his infrequent peals 
 from skiey belfries built of sun and mist. 
 
6 GREEN FIRE 
 
 In the fields, where the thorns were green as 
 rivulets of melted snow and the grass had the 
 bloom of emerald, and the leaves of docken, 
 clover, cinquefoil, sorrel, and a thousand plants 
 and flowers, were wave-green, the ewes lay, idly 
 watching with their luminous amber eyes the 
 frisking and leaping of the close-curled, tuft- 
 tailed, woolly-legged lambs. In corners of the 
 hedgerows, and in hollows in the rolling meadows, 
 the primrose, the celandine, the buttercup, the 
 dandelion, and the daffodil spilled little eddies 
 of the sunflood which overbrimmed them with 
 light. All day long the rapture of the larks 
 filled the blue air with vanishing spirals of music, 
 swift and passionate in the ascent, repetitive and 
 less piercing in the narrowing downward gyres. 
 From every whin the poignant monotonous note 
 of the yellowhammer re-echoed. Each pastoral 
 hedge was alive with robins, chaffinches, and the 
 dusky shadows of the wild mice darting here and 
 there among the greening boughs. 
 
 Whenever this green fire is come upon 
 the earth, the swift contagion spreads to the 
 human heart. What the seedlings feel in the 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 7 
 
 brown mould, what the sap feels in the trees, 
 what the blood feels in every creature from the 
 newt in the pool to the nesting bird, so feels the 
 strange remembering ichor that runs its red tides 
 through human hearts and brains. Spring has 
 its subtler magic for us, because of the dim 
 mysteries of unremembering remembrance and 
 of the vague radiances of hope. Something 
 in us sings an ascendant song, and we expect 
 we know not what : something in us sings a 
 decrescent song, and we realise vaguely the stir- 
 ring of immemorial memories. 
 
 There is none who will admit that Spring is 
 fairer elsewhere than in his own land. But there 
 are regions where the season is so hauntingly 
 beautiful that it would seem as though Angus 
 Ogue knew them for his chosen resting-places in 
 his green journey. 
 
 Angus 0£, Angus MacGreine, Angus the Ever 
 Youthful, the Son of the Sun, a fair god he 
 indeed, golden-haired and wonderful as Apollo 
 Chrusokumos. Some say that he is Love : some, 
 that he is Spring : some, even, that in him 
 Thanatos, the Hellenic Celt that was his far-off 
 
8 GREEN FIRE 
 
 kin, is reincarnate. But why seek riddles in 
 flowing water? It may well be that Angus 
 Ogue is Love, and Spring, and Death. The 
 elemental gods are ever triune : and in the 
 human heart, in whose lost Eden an ancient tree 
 of knowledge grows, wherefrom the mind has not 
 yet gathered more than a few windfalls, it is 
 surely sooth that Death and Love are oftentimes 
 one and the same, and that they love to come 
 to us in the apparel of Spring. 
 
 Sure, indeed, Angus Ogue is a name above all 
 sweet to lovers, for is he not the god — the fair 
 Youth of the Tuatha-de-Danann, the Ancient 
 People, with us still, though for ages seen of us 
 no more — from the meeting of whose lips are 
 born white birds, which fly abroad and nest in 
 lovers' hearts till the moment come when, on the 
 yearning lips of love, their invisible wings shall 
 become kisses again ? 
 
 Then, too, there is the old legend that Angus 
 goes to and fro upon the world, a weaver of 
 rainbows. He follows the Spring, or is its herald. 
 Often his rainbows are seen in the heavens : often 
 in the rapt gaze of love. We have all perceived 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 9 
 
 them in the eyes of children, and some of us have 
 discerned them in the hearts of sorrowful women, 
 and in the dim brains of the old. Ah, for sure, 
 if Angus Og be the lovely Weaver of Hope, he is 
 deathless comrade of the Spring, and we may 
 well pray to him to let his green fire move in our 
 veins : whether he be but the Eternal Youth of 
 the World, or be also Love, whose soul is youth ; 
 or even though he be likewise Death himself, 
 Death to whom Love was wedded long, long ago. 
 
 But nowhere was Spring more lovely, nowhere 
 was the green fire of life so quick with impulsive 
 ardours, as, one year of the years, in a seaward 
 region to the north of the ancient forest of 
 Broceliande, in what of old was Armorica and 
 now is Brittany. 
 
 Here Spring often comes late, but ever lingers 
 long. Here, too, in the dim green avenues of 
 the oak-woods of Kerival, the nightingales reach 
 their uttermost western flight. Never has the 
 shepherd, tending his scant flock on the upland 
 pastures of Finistere, nor the fisherman lying 
 a-dream amid the sandy thickets of Ushant, 
 
10 GREEN FIRE 
 
 heard that quaint music — that primeval and ever 
 young song of the passionate heart which Augus- 
 tine might well have had in mind when he 
 exclaimed, ' Sero te amavi, Pulchritudo, tarn 
 antiqua et tarn nova, sero te amavi."' But, each 
 April, in the woods of Kerival the nightingales 
 congregate from afar, and through May their 
 songs make the forest like a sanctuary filled with 
 choristers swinging incense of a delicate music. 
 
 It is a wonderful region, that which lies be- 
 twixt Ploumaliou on the east and Kerloek in the 
 west : the oldest, remotest part of an ancient, 
 remote land. Here the few hamlets and fewer 
 scattered villages are, even in externals, the same 
 as they were a hundred or three hundred years 
 ago. In essentials, there is no difference since 
 St. Herve or St. Ronan preached the new faith, 
 or indeed since Ahes the Pale rode through the 
 forest aisles in the moonlight and heard the Nains 
 chanting, or since King Gradlon raced his horse 
 against the foam when his daughter let the sea in 
 upon the fair city of Ys. The good cures preach 
 the religion of Christ and of Mary to the peasants; 
 but in the minds of most of these there lingers 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 11 
 
 much of the bygone faith that reared the menhirs. 
 Few indeed there are in whose ears is never an 
 echo of the old haunted world, when every wood 
 and stream, every barren moor and granite wil- 
 derness, every sea-pasture and creek and bay had 
 its particular presence, its spirit of good or ill, 
 its menace, its perilous enchantment. The eyes 
 of the peasants by these shores, these moors, these 
 windy hill-slopes to the south, are not fixed only 
 on the meal-chest and the fallow- field, or, on 
 fete-days, upon the crucifix in the little church ; 
 but often dwell upon a past time, more sacred 
 now than ever in this bitter relinquishing age. 
 On the lips of many may be heard lines from 
 that sad folk-song, Ann Amzer Dremenet (In the 
 long ago) :— 
 
 Eur c'havel kaer karn olifant, 
 War-n-han tachou aour hag archant. 
 
 Daelou a ver, daelou chouero : 
 Neb a zo enn han zo maro ! 
 
 Zo maro, zo maro pell-zo, 
 Ilag hi luskel, o kana 'to, 
 
 Hag hi luskel, luskel ato, 
 Kollct ar skiand-vad gant-ho 
 
 UNIVERSITY Of CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
12 GREEN FIRE 
 
 Ar skiand-vad ho deuz kollet; 
 Kollet ho deuz joaiou ar bed. 
 
 But when they had made the cradle 
 
 Of ivory and of gold, 
 Their hearts were heavy still 
 
 With the sorrow of old. 
 
 And ever as they rocked, the tears 
 
 Ran down, sad tears : 
 Who is it lieth dead therein, 
 
 Dead all these weary years ? 
 
 And still they rock that cradle there 
 
 Of ivory and gold ; 
 For in their brains the shadow is 
 
 The Shadow of Old. 
 
 They weep, and know not what they weep ; 
 
 They wait a vain rebirth : 
 Vanity of vanities, alas, 
 
 For there is but one birth 
 
 On the wide green Earth. 
 
 Old sayings they have, too : who knows how 
 old? The charcoal-burner in the woods above 
 Kerloek will still shudder at the thought of 
 death on the bleak open moor, because of the 
 carrion-crow that awaits his sightless eyes, the 
 fox that will tear his heart out, and the toad 
 that will swallow his soul. Long, long ago 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 13 
 
 Gwenc'hlan the Bard sang thus of his foe and 
 the foes of his people, when every battle-field was 
 a pasture for the birds and beasts of prey, and 
 when the Spirit of Evil lurked near every corpse 
 in the guise of a toad. And still the shrimper 
 in the sands beyond Ploumaliou will cry out 
 against the predatory sea-fowl, A gas ar Gall — 
 a gas ar Gall! (Chase the Franks!) and not 
 know that, ages ago, this cry went up from the 
 greatest of Breton kings, when Nomenoe drove 
 the Frankish invaders beyond the Oust and the 
 Vilaine, and lighted their flight by the flames of 
 Nantes and Rennes. 
 
 Near the northern frontier of the remotest 
 part of this ancient region, the Manor of Kerival 
 was the lighthouse of its forest vicinage. It 
 was and is surrounded by woods, for the most 
 part of oak and chestnut and beech. Therein 
 are trees of an age so great that they may have 
 sheltered the flight of Jud Mael when Ahes 
 chased him on her white stallion from glade to 
 glade, and one so venerably old that its roots 
 may have been soaked in the blood of their 
 child Judik, whom she forced her betrayer to 
 
14 GREEN FIRE 
 
 slay with the sword before she thrust a dagger 
 into his heart. Northward of the manor, how- 
 ever, the forest is wholly of melancholy spruce, 
 of larch, and pine. The pines extend in a 
 desolate disarray to the interminable dunes, be- 
 yond which the Breton Sea lifts its grey wave 
 against a grey horizon. On that shore there 
 are few rocks, though here and there fang-like 
 reefs rise, ready to tear and devour any boat 
 hurled upon them at full tide in days of storm. 
 At Kerival Haven, too, there is a wilderness of 
 granite rock, a mass of pinnacles, buttresses, and 
 inchoate confusion, ending in long smooth ledges 
 of black basalt, these for ever washed by the 
 green flow of the tides. 
 
 None of the peasants knew the age of the 
 House of Kerival, or how long the Kerival family 
 had been there. Old Yann Henan, the blind 
 brother of the white-haired cure, Pere Alain, 
 who was the oldest man in all the countryside, 
 was wont to say that Kerival woods had been 
 green before ever there was a house on the 
 banks of the Seine, and that a Kerival had 
 been lord of the land before ever there was a 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 15 
 
 king of France. All believed this, except Pere 
 Alain, and even he dissented only when Yann 
 spoke of the seigneur's ancestor as the Marquis 
 of Kerival : for, as he explained, there were no 
 marquises in those far-off days. But this went 
 for nothing : for, unfortunately, Pere AJain had 
 once in his youth preached against the popular 
 belief in Korrigans and Nains, and had said that 
 these supernatural beings did not exist, or at any 
 rate were never seen of man. How, then, could 
 much credence be placed on the testimony of a 
 man who could be so prejudiced? Yann had 
 but to sing a familiar snatch from the old ballad 
 of Aotru Nann Hag ar Gorrigan — the fragment 
 beginning — 
 
 Ken a gavas eur waz vihan 
 E-kichen ti eur Gorrigan, 
 
 and ending — 
 
 Met gwell eo d'in mervel breman 
 'Get dimizi <P eur Gorrigan ! 
 
 The Lord Nann came to the Kelpie's Pool 
 And stooped to drink the water cool : 
 
 But he saw the kelpie sitting by, 
 Combing her long locks listlessly. 
 
16 GREEN FIRE 
 
 ' O knight/ she sang, ' thou dost not fear 
 To draw these perilous waters near ! 
 
 Wed thou me now, or on a stone 
 
 For seven years perish all alone, 
 
 Or three days hence moan your death-moan ! ' 
 
 ( I will not wed you, nor alone 
 Perish with torment on a stone, 
 Nor three days hence draw my death-moan — 
 
 For I shall die, O Kelpie fair, 
 
 When God lets down the golden stair, 
 
 And so my soul thou shalt not share — 
 
 But, if my fate is to lie dead, 
 
 Here, with thy cold breast for my bed, 
 
 Death can be mine, I will not wed ! ' 
 
 When Yann sang this, or told for the hundredth 
 time the familiar story of how Paskou-Hir, the 
 tailor, was treated by the Nains when he sought 
 to rifle the hidden treasure in the grotto, every 
 one knew that he spoke what was authentic, what 
 was true. As for Pere Alain, well, priests are told 
 to say many things by the good, wise, Holy Father, 
 who rules the world so well but has never been 
 in Brittany, and so cannot know all that happens 
 there, and has happened from time immemorial. 
 Then, again, was there not the evidence of the 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 17 
 
 alien, the strange quiet man called Yann the 
 Dumb, because of his silence at most times — him 
 that was the servitor-in-chief to the Lady Lois, 
 the beautiful paralysed wife of the Marquis of 
 Kerival, and that came from the far north, where 
 the kindred of the Armorican race dwell among 
 the misty isles and rainy hills of Scotland ? In- 
 deed Yann had been heard to say that he would 
 sooner disbelieve in the Pope himself than in the 
 kelpie ; for in his own land he had himself heard 
 her devilish music luring him across a lonely 
 moor, and he had known a man who had gone 
 fey because he had seen the face of a kelpie in a 
 hill- tarn. 
 
 In the time of the greening, even the korrigans 
 are unseen of walkers in the dusk. They are 
 busy then, some say, winding the white into the 
 green bulbs of the water-lilies, or tinting the 
 wings within the chrysalis of the water-fly, or 
 weaving the bright skins for the newts: but, 
 however this may be, the season of the green 
 flood over the brown earth is not that wherein 
 man may fear them. 
 
 No fear of korrigan or nain, or any other 
 u 
 
18 GREEN FIRE 
 
 woodland creature or haunter of pool or stream, 
 disturbed two who walked in the green-gloom of 
 a deep avenue in the midst of the forest beyond 
 the Manor of Kerival. They were young, and 
 there was green fire in their hearts : for they 
 moved slow, hand clasped in hand, and with their 
 eyes dwelling often on the face of each other. 
 And whenever Ynys de Kerival looked at her 
 cousin Alan, she thought him the fairest and 
 comeliest of the sons of men : and whenever Alan 
 turned the longing of his eyes upon Ynys, he 
 wondered if anywhere upon the green earth 
 moved aught so sweet and winsome, if anywhere 
 in the green world was another woman so beauti- 
 ful in body, mind, and spirit, as Ynys — Ynys the 
 Dark, as the peasants called her, though Ynys of 
 the dusky hair and the hazel-green eyes would 
 have been truer of her whom Alan de Kerival 
 loved. Of a truth, she was fair to see. Tall 
 she was and lithe : in her slim svelt body 
 there was something of the swift movement 
 of the hill-deer, something of the agile abandon 
 of the leopard. She was of that small clan, 
 the true daughters of the sun. Her tanned 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 19 
 
 face and hands showed that she loved the 
 open air, though indeed her every movement 
 proved this. The sun-life was even in that 
 shadowy hair of hers, which had a sheen of living 
 light wrought into its fragrant dusk : it was in 
 her large, deep, translucent eyes, of a soft, dewy 
 twilight-grey often filled with green light, as of 
 the forest-aisles or as the heart of a sea- wave as 
 it billows over sunlit sand : it was in the heart 
 and in the brain of this daughter of an ancient 
 race — and the nostalgia of the green world was 
 hers. For in her veins ran the blood not only 
 of her Armorican ancestors, but of another Celtic 
 strain — that of the Gael of the Isles. Through 
 her mother, Lois Macdonald, of the remote south 
 isles of the Outer Hebrides, the daughter of a 
 line as ancient as that of Tristran de Kerival, she 
 inherited even more than her share of the gloom, 
 the mystery, the sea-passion, the vivid oneness 
 with nature which have disclosed to so many of 
 her fellow-Celts secret sources of peace. 
 
 Everywhere in that region the peasant-poets 
 sang of Ynys the Dark, or of her sister Annaik. 
 They were the two beautiful women of the world 
 
20 GREEN FIRE 
 
 there. But, walking in the fragrant green-gloom 
 of the beeches, Alan smiled when he thought of 
 Annaik, for all her milk-white skin and her won- 
 derful tawny hair, for all her strange shadowy 
 amber-brown eyes, eyes often like dark hill- 
 crystals aflame with stormy light. She was 
 beautiful, and tall too, and with an even wilder 
 grace than Ynys ; yet — there was but one woman 
 in the world, but one Dream, and her name was 
 Ynys. 
 
 It was then that he remembered the line of 
 the unfortunate boy-poet of the Paris that has 
 not forgotten him ; and, looking at Ynys, who 
 seemed to him the very spirit of the green life 
 all around him, muttered : ' Then in the violet 
 Jorest, all a-bourgeon, Eucharis said to me : It is 
 Spring.'' 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE HOUSE OF KERIVAL 
 
 It was with a sudden beating of the heart that, 
 midway in Easter, Alan de Kerival received in 
 Paris two letters : one from the Marquis de Keri- 
 val, and the other from his cousin Ynys, whom 
 he loved. 
 
 At all times he was ill at ease in the great 
 city ; or at all times save when he was alone in 
 his little study in the Tour de Tile, or in the 
 great circular room where the master-astronomer, 
 Daniel Dare, wrought unceasingly. On rare 
 occasions, golden afternoons these, he escaped to 
 the green places near Paris — to Rambouillet or 
 St. Germain, or even to Fontainbleau. There, 
 under the leafless trees of Winter or at the first 
 purpling of Spring, he was wont to walk for 
 hours, dreaming his dream. For Alan was a 
 poet, and to dream was his birthright. 
 
22 GREEN FIRE 
 
 And for dream, what had he? There was 
 Ynys above all ; Ynys whom he loved with ever 
 deepening joy and wonder. More and more she 
 had become to him his real life : he lived in her, 
 for her, because of her. More and more, too, he 
 realised that she was his strength, his inspiration. 
 But besides this abiding delight, which made his 
 heart leap whenever he saw a Breton name above 
 a shop or on a volume on the bookstalls, he was 
 ever occupied by that wonderful past of his race 
 which was to him a living reality. It was 
 perhaps because he so keenly perceived the 
 romance of the present, the romance of the 
 general hour, of the individual moment, that he 
 turned so insatiably to the past with its death- 
 less charm, its haunting appeal. The great 
 astronomer whom he loved and served knew the 
 young man well, and was wont to say that his 
 favourite assistant was born a thousand years 
 too late. 
 
 One day a Breton neighbour of the Marquis 
 de Kerival questioned Daniel Dare as to who the 
 young man's friends were. ' Nomenoe, Gradlon- 
 Maur, Gwenc'hlan, Taliesin, Merlin, and Oisin,' 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 23 
 
 was the reply. And it was true. Alan's mind 
 was as irresistibly drawn to the Celtic world of 
 the past as the swallow to the sunway. In a 
 word, he was not only a poet, but a Celtic poet ; 
 and not only a Celtic poet, but a dreamer of the 
 Celtic dream. 
 
 Perhaps this was because of the double strain 
 in his veins. Doubtless, too, it was continuously 
 enhanced by his intimate knowledge of two of 
 the Celtic languages, that of the Breton and that 
 of the Gael. It is language that is the surest 
 stimulus to the remembering nerves. We have 
 a memory within memory, as layers of skin 
 underlie the epidermis. With most of us this 
 anterior remembrance remains dormant through- 
 out life ; but to some are given swift ancestral 
 recollections. Alan de Kerival was of these few. 
 
 His aunt, the Marquise, true Gael of the 
 Hebrid Isles as she was, loved the language of 
 her people, and spoke it, as she spoke English, 
 even better than French. Of Breton, save a few 
 words and phrases, she knew almost nothing — 
 though Armorican was exclusively used through- 
 out the whole Kerival region, was the common 
 
24 GREEN FIRE 
 
 tongue in the manor itself, and was habitually 
 affected even by the Marquis de Kerival — on the 
 few occasions when Tristran the Silent, as the old 
 nobleman was named, cared to speak. But with 
 two members of the household she invariably 
 spoke in Gaelic : with her nephew Alan, the child 
 of her sister, Silis Macdonald ; and her old servi- 
 tor, Ian Macdonald, known among his fellows 
 as Yann the Dumb, mainly because he seldom 
 spoke to them, having no language but his own. 
 Latterly, her daughter Ynys had become as 
 familiar with the one Celtic tongue as the other. 
 With this double key, Alan unlocked many 
 doors. All the wonderful romance of old Ar- 
 morica and of ancient Wales was familiar to him, 
 and he was deeply versed in the still more won- 
 derful and magical lore of the Gaelic race. In 
 his brain ran ever that Ossianic tide which has 
 borne so many marvellous argosies through the 
 troubled waters of the modern mind. Old bal- 
 lads of his native isles, with their haunting 
 Gaelic rhythms and idioms, and their frequent 
 reminiscences of the Norse viking and the Danish 
 summer-sailor, were often in his ears. He had 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 25 
 
 lived with his hero Cuchullin from the days when 
 the boy showed his royal blood at Emain-Macha 
 till that sad hour when his madness came upon 
 him and he died. He had fared forth with many 
 a Lifting of the Sunbeam, and had followed 
 Oisin step by step on that last melancholy journey 
 when Malvina led the blind old man along the 
 lonely shores of Arran. He had watched the 
 crann-tara flare from glen to glen, and at the 
 bidding of that fiery cross he had seen the whirl- 
 ing of swords, the dusky flight of arrow-rain, 
 and, from the isles, the leaping forth of the war- 
 birlinns to meet the viking-galleys. How often, 
 too, he had followed Nial of the Nine Hostages, 
 and had seen the Irish Charlemagne ride victor 
 through Saxon London, or across the Norman 
 plains, or with onward sword direct his army 
 against the white walls of the Alps. How often 
 he had been with the great king Nomenoe, when 
 he with his Armoricans chased the Frankish 
 wolves away from Breton soil ; or had raced with 
 Gradlon-Maur from the drowning seas which 
 overwhelmed Ys, where the king's daughter had 
 at the same moment put her hands on the Gates 
 
26 GREEN FIRE 
 
 of Love and Death. How often he had heard 
 Merlin and Taliesin speak of the secret things of 
 the ancient wisdom ; or Gwenc'hlan chant upon 
 his wild harp ; or the fugitive song of Vivien in 
 the green woods of Broceliande, where the en- 
 chanted seer sleeps his long sleep, and dreams 
 his dream of eternal youth. 
 
 It was all this marvellous life of old which 
 wrought upon Alan de KerivaPs life as by a spell. 
 Often he recalled the words of a Gaelic sian he 
 had heard Yann croon in his soft, monotonous 
 voice — words which made a light shoreward eddy 
 of the present, and were solemn with the deep-sea 
 sound of the past that is with us even as we speak. 
 
 He was himself, too, a poet, and loved to tell 
 anew, in Breton, to the peasants of Kerival, some 
 of the wild north- tales, or to relate in Gaelic to 
 his aunt and to Ynys the beautiful folk-ballads 
 of Brittany, which Annaik knew by heart, and 
 chanted with the strange wailing music of the 
 forest-wind. 
 
 In that old manor, moreover, another shadow 
 put a gloom into his mind. This was another 
 shadow than that which made the house so silent 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 27 
 
 and chill, the inviolate isolation of the paralysed 
 but still beautiful Marquise Lois from her invalid 
 husband, limb-useless from his thighs because of 
 a hurt done in the war, into which he had gone 
 brown-haired and strong, and whence he had 
 come broken in hope, shattered in health, and 
 grey with premature age. And this other shadow 
 was the mystery of his birth. 
 
 It was in vain he had tried to learn the name 
 of his father. Only three people knew it — the 
 Marquis Tristran, the Marquise Lois, and Yann 
 the Dumb. From none of these could he elicit 
 more than what he had long known. All was to 
 be made clear on his twenty-fifth birthday : till 
 then he had to be content with the knowledge 
 that he was Alan de Kerival by courtesy only : 
 that he was the son of Silis Macdonald, of an 
 ancient family, whose ancestral home was in 
 one of the isles of the Southern Hebrides, — 
 of Silis, the dead sister of Lois de Kerival : and 
 that he was the adopted child of the Marquis 
 and Marquise who bore that old Armoric name. 
 
 That there was tragedy inwrought with his story 
 he knew well. From fugitive words, too, he had 
 
28 GREEN FIRE 
 
 gained the idea that his father, in common with 
 the Marquis Tristran, had been a soldier in the 
 French army : though as to whether this un- 
 known parent was Scottish or Breton or French, 
 or as to whether he was alive or dead, there was 
 no homing clue. 
 
 To all his inquiries of the Marquise he received 
 no answer, or was told simply that he must wait. 
 The Marquis he rarely saw, and never spoke with. 
 If ever he encountered the stern, white-haired 
 man as he was wheeled through the garden ways 
 or down one of the green alleys, or along the 
 corridors of the vast, rambling chateau, they 
 passed in silence. Sometimes the invalid would 
 look at him with the fierce, unwavering eyes of a 
 hawk : but for the most part the icy, steel-blue 
 eyes ignored the young man altogether. 
 
 Yann, too, could not, or would not, confide 
 anything more than Alan had already learned 
 from the Marquise. The gaunt old Hebridean 
 — whose sole recreation, when not sitting pipe in 
 mouth before the flaming logs, was to wander 
 along the melancholy dunes by the melancholy 
 grey sea, and mutter continuously to himself in 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 29 
 
 his soft island-Gaelic — would talk slowly by the 
 hour on old legends, and ballad-lore, and on 
 seanachas of every kind. When, however, Alan 
 asked him about the sisters Lois and Silis 
 Macdonald, or how Lois came to marry a Breton, 
 and as to the man Silis loved, and what the name 
 was of the isle whereon they lived — or even as to 
 whether Ian himself had kith or kin living — 
 Yann would justify his name. He took no 
 trouble in evasion : he simply became dumb. 
 
 Sometimes Alan asked the old man if he 
 cared to see the Isles again. At that, a look 
 ever came into Ian Macdonald's eyes which made 
 his young clansman love him. 
 
 4 It will never, never, be forgetting my own 
 place I will be, 1 he replied once, ' no, never. I 
 would rather be hearing the sea on the shores 
 there than all the hymns of heaven, and I would 
 rather be having the canna and the heather 
 over my head than be under the altar of the 
 great church at Kerloek. No, no, it is the pain 
 I have for my own place, and the isle where my 
 blood has been for hundreds of years, and where 
 for sure my heart is, Alan Mac ' 
 
SO GREEN FIRE 
 
 With eager ears Alan had hoped for the name 
 whereat the old man had stopped short. It would 
 
 have told him much. ; Alan, son of ! ' Even 
 
 that baptismal name would probably have told 
 him if his father were a Gael or a Breton, an 
 Englishman or a Frenchman. But Yann said no 
 more, then or later. 
 
 Alan had hoped, too, that when he came 
 back after his first long absence from Kerival, 
 his aunt would be more explicit with him. A 
 vain hope ; for when once more he was at 
 the chateau he found the Marquise even less 
 communicative than was her wont. Her hus- 
 band was more than ever taciturn, and a gloom 
 seemed to have descended upon the house. For 
 the first time he noticed a change in the attitude 
 of Annaik. Her great, scornful, wild-bird eyes 
 looked at him often strangely. She sought him, 
 and then was silent. If he did not speak, she 
 became morose : if he spoke, she relapsed into 
 her old scornful quiescence. Sometimes, when 
 they were alone, she unbent, and was his beauti- 
 ful cousin and comrade again : but in the pre- 
 sence of Ynys she bewildered him by her sudden 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 31 
 
 ennui, or bitterness, or even shadowy hostility. 
 As for Ynys, she was unhappy, save in Alan's love 
 — a love that neither her father nor mother 
 knew, and of which she never spoke to Annaik. 
 
 If Alan were a dreamer, Ynys was even more 
 so. Then, too, she had what Annaik had not, 
 though she lacked what her sister had. For she 
 was mystical as that young saint of the Bretons 
 who saw Christ walking by night upon the hills, 
 and believed that he met there a new Endymion, 
 his Bride of the Church come to him in the 
 moonshine. Ynys believed in St. Guennik, as 
 she believed in Jeanne d'Arc, and no legend 
 fascinated her more than that strange one she 
 had heard from Yann, of how Arthur the Celtic 
 hero would come again out of Flath-innis, and 
 redeem his lost receding peoples. But, unlike 
 Annaik, she had little of the barbaric passion, 
 little of that insatiate nostalgia for the life of 
 the open moor and the windy sea, though these 
 she loved not less whole-heartedly than did her 
 sister. The two both loved nature as few women 
 love her: but to Annaik the forest and the 
 moorland were home, while to Ynys they 
 
32 GREEN FIRE 
 
 were rather sanctuaries or realms of natural 
 romance. 
 
 This change to an unwelcome taciturnity had 
 been noted by Alan on his home visit at Christ- 
 mas. Still, he had thought little of it after his 
 return to Paris, for the Noel-tide had been 
 sweetened by the word given to him by Ynys. 
 
 Then Easter had come, and with it the two 
 letters of such import. That from the Marquise 
 was short and in the tongue he and she loved 
 best : but even thus it was written guardedly. 
 The purport was that, now his twenty-fifth birth- 
 day was at hand, he would soon learn what he 
 had so long wished to know. 
 
 That from Ynys puzzled him. Why should 
 dispeace have arisen between Ynys and Annaik ? 
 Why should an already gloomy house have been 
 made still more sombre ? 
 
 One day, Ynys wrote, she had come upon 
 Annaik riding Sultan, the black stallion, and 
 thrashing the horse till the foam flew from the 
 champed bit. When she had cried to Annaik 
 to be merciful, and asked her why she punished 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 32 
 
 Sultan so, her sister had cried mockingly, ' It is 
 my Love! Addio, Amor el Addio! Addio ! 
 Addio!' — and at each addio had brought her 
 whip so fiercely upon the stallion's quivering 
 flanks that he had reared, and all but thrown 
 her, till she swung him round as on a pivot and 
 went at a wild gallop down a long beech alley 
 that led into the heart of the forest. 
 
 Well, these things would be better understood 
 soon. In another week he would be out of Paris, 
 possibly never to return. And then . . . 
 Brittany — Kerival — Ynys ! 
 
 Nevertheless his heart was not wholly away 
 from his work. The great astronomer had 
 known and loved Hersart de Kerival, the younger 
 brother of Tristran, and it was for his sake that 
 he had taken the young man into his observa- 
 tory. Soon he had discovered that the youth 
 loved the beautiful science, and was apt, eager, 
 and yet patient to learn. In the five years 
 which Alan spent — with brief Brittany intervals 
 — in the Observatory of the Tour de Tile, he had 
 come to delight in the profession which he had 
 chosen, and of which the Marquise had approved. 
 
34 GREEN FIRE 
 
 He was none the less close and eager a student 
 because that he brought to this enthralling science 
 that spirit of the poetry of the past, which was 
 the habitual atmosphere wherein his mind dwelt. 
 Even the most eloquent dissertations of Daniel 
 Dare failed to move him so much as some ancient 
 strain wherein the stars of heaven were hailed as 
 kindred of men : and never had any exposition of 
 the lunar mystery so exquisitely troubled him as 
 that wonderful cry of Ossian which opens the 
 poem of Darthula : — 
 
 ' Daughter of heaven, fair art thou ! the silence of thy 
 face is pleasant. Thou comest forth in loveliness : the 
 stars attend thy blue steps in the east. The clouds rejoice 
 in thy presence, O moon, and brighten their dark-brown 
 sides. Who is like thee in heaven, daughter of the night? 
 The stars are ashamed in thy presence, and turn aside 
 their green sparkling eyes. Whither dost thou retire 
 from thy course, when the darkness of thy countenance 
 grows ? Hast thou thy hall like Ossian ? Dwellest thou 
 in the shadow of grief? Have thy sisters fallen from 
 heaven? Are they who rejoiced with thee, at night, no 
 more ? — Yes ! — They have fallen, fair light ! and thou 
 dost often retire to mourn. But thou thyself shalt fail, 
 one night ; and leave thy blue path in heaven. The stars 
 will then lift their green heads : they, who were ashamed 
 in thy presence, will rejoice.' 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 STORM 
 
 Yes, he was glad to leave Paris, although that 
 home of lost causes, thus designate in a far truer 
 sense than is the fair city by the Isis, had a spell 
 for him. But not Paris, not even what, night 
 after night, he beheld from the Tour de Tile, 
 held him under a spell comparable with that 
 which drew him back to the ancient land where 
 his heart was. 
 
 In truth it was with relief at last that he saw 
 the city recede from his gaze, and merge into 
 the green alleys north-westward. With a sigh 
 of content, he admitted it was indeed well to 
 escape from that fevered life — a life that, to 
 him, even in his lightest mood, seemed far more 
 phantasmal than that which formed the back- 
 ground to all his thoughts and visions. Long 
 
36 GREEN FIRE 
 
 before the cherry orchards above Rouen came 
 into view, he realised how glad he was even to be 
 away from the bare, gaunt room where so many 
 of his happiest hours had been spent : that 
 windy crow's-nest of a room at the top of the 
 Tour de File, whence nightly he had watched 
 the procession of the stars, and nightly had 
 opened the dreamland of his imagination to an 
 even more alluring procession out of the past. 
 
 His one regret was in having to part from Daniel 
 Dare, that strange and impressive personality 
 who had so fascinated him, and the spell of 
 whose sombre intellect, with its dauntless range 
 and scope, had startled the thought of Europe, 
 and even given dreams to many to whom all 
 dreams had become the very Fata Morgana of 
 human life. 
 
 Absorbed as he was, Daniel Dare realised that 
 Alan was an astronomer primarily because he was 
 a poet, rather than an astronomer by inevit- 
 able bias. He saw clearly into the young man's 
 mind, and certainly did not resent that his 
 favourite pupil loved to dwell with Merlin rather 
 than with Kepler, and that even Newton or his 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 37 
 
 own master Arago had no such influence over him 
 as the far off, nigh inaudible music of the harp of 
 Aneurin. 
 
 And in truth below all Alan's passion for 
 science, of that science which is at once the 
 oldest, the noblest, and the most momentous : 
 the science of the innumerous concourse of dead, 
 dying, and flaming adolescent worlds — dust about 
 the threshold of an unfathomable and immeasur- 
 able universe, wherein this earth of ours is no 
 more than a mere whirling grain of sand — below 
 all this living devotion lay a deeper passion 
 still. 
 
 Truly, his soul must have lived a thousand 
 years ago. In him, at least, the old Celtic brain was 
 reborn with a vivid intensity which none guessed 
 and none except Ynys knew — if even she, for Alan 
 himself only vaguely surmised the extent and 
 depth of this obsession. In heart and brain that 
 old world lived anew. Himself a poet, all that 
 was fair and tragically beautiful was for ever 
 undergoing in his mind a marvellous transfor- 
 mation — a magical resurrection rather, wherein 
 what was remote and bygone, and crowned with 
 
38 GREEN FIRE 
 
 oblivious dust, became alive again with intense 
 and beautiful life. 
 
 It did not harmonise ill with Alan's mood, that, 
 on the afternoon of the day he left Rouen, 
 great bulbous storm-clouds soared out of the 
 west, and cast a gloom upon the landscape. 
 
 That is a strange sophistry which registers 
 passion according to its nearness to the blithe 
 weal symbolised in fair weather. Deep passion 
 instinctively moves towards the shadow rather 
 than towards the golden noons of light. Passion 
 hears what love at the most dreams of : passion 
 sees what love mayhap dimly discerns in a glass 
 darkly. A million of our fellows are i in love 1 at 
 any or every moment ; and for these the shadowy 
 way is intolerable. But for the few, in whom 
 love is, the eyes are circumspect against the dark 
 hour which comes when heart and brain and blood 
 are aflame with the paramount ecstasy of life. 
 
 Deep passion is always in love with death. 
 The temperate solicitudes of affection know not 
 this perverse emotion, which is simply the darker 
 shadow inevitable to a deeper joy — as the pro- 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 39 
 
 fundity of an Alpine lake is to be measured by 
 the height of the remote summits which rise sheer 
 from its marge. 
 
 When Alan saw this gloom slowly absorb the 
 sunlight, and heard below the soft Spring cadences 
 of the wind the moan of coming tempest, his 
 melancholy lightened. Soon he would see the 
 storm crushing through the woods of Kerival : 
 soon feel the fierce rain come sweeping inland 
 from Ploumaliou : soon hear, confusedly obscure, 
 the noise of the Breton Sea along the reef-set 
 sands. Already he felt the lips of Ynys pressed 
 against his own. 
 
 The sound of the sea called through the dusk, 
 now with the muffled under-roar of famished 
 lions, now with a loud, continuous baying like 
 that of eager hounds. 
 
 Seaward, the deepening shadows passed in- 
 tricately from wave to wave. The bays and 
 sheltered waters were full of a tumult as of baffled 
 flight, of fugitives jostling each other in a wild 
 and fruitless evasion. Along the interminable 
 reach of the dunes of Kerival the sea's lip writhed 
 
40 GREEN FIRE 
 
 and curled ; while out of the heart of the turbu- 
 lent waste beyond issued a shrill, intermittent 
 crying, followed by stifled laughter. Ever and 
 again tons of whirling water, meeting, disparted 
 with a hoarse thunder. This ever growing and 
 tempestuous violence was reiterated in a myriad 
 rancous, clamant voices along the sands, and 
 among the reefs and rocks and weed-covered, 
 wave-hollowed crags. 
 
 Above the shore a ridge of tamarisk-fringed 
 dune suspended, hanging there, dark and dis- 
 hevelled, like a gigantic eyebrow on the fore- 
 head of a sombre and mysterious being. Beyond 
 this, again, lay a stretch of barren moor, caught 
 and clasped a mile away by a dark belt of pines, 
 amid which the incessant volume of the wind 
 passed with a shrill whistling. Farther in 
 among the trees were oases of a solemn silence, 
 filled only at intervals with a single flute-like 
 wind-eddy, falling there as the song of a child 
 lost and baffled in a waste place. 
 
 Over and above the noise of the sea was 
 a hoarse cry thridding it as a flying shuttle in 
 a gigantic loom. This was the wind, which 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 41 
 
 continuously swept from wave to wave, shrewd, 
 salt, bitter with the sterile breath of the 
 wilderness whereon it roamed, crying and moan- 
 ing, baying, howling, insatiate. 
 
 The sea-fowl, congregating from afar, had 
 swarmed inland. Their wailing cries filled the 
 spray-wet obscurities. The blackness that comes 
 before the deepest dark lay in the hollow of the 
 great wings of the tempest. Peace nowhere pre- 
 vailed, for in those abysmal depths where the wind 
 was not even a whisper, there was listless gloom 
 only, because no strife is there, and no dream lives 
 amid those silent apathies. 
 
 Neither upon the waters nor on the land was 
 there sign of human life. In that remote region, 
 solitude was not a dream but a reality. An 
 ancient land, this loneliest corner of sea-washed 
 Brittany : an ancient land, with ever upon it the 
 light of olden dreams, the gloom of indefinable 
 tragedy, the mystery of a destiny long ago begun 
 and never fulfilled. 
 
 Lost like a rock in a forest, a weather-worn 
 ivy-grown chateau stood within sound though 
 not within sight of this tempestuous sea. All 
 
42 GREEN FIRE 
 
 about it was the deep sonorous echo of wind and 
 wave, transmuted into a myriad cries among the 
 wailing pines and oaks and vast beeches of the 
 woods of Kerival. Wind and wave, too, made 
 themselves audible amid the gables and in the 
 huge chimneys of the old manor-house : even in 
 the draughty corridors an echo of the sea could 
 be heard. 
 
 The pathways of the forest were dank with 
 sodden leaves, the debris of Autumn which the 
 snows of Winter had saved from the whirling gales 
 of January. Underneath the brushwood and the 
 lower boughs these lay in brown, clotted masses, 
 emitting a fugitive indefinite odour, as though the 
 ghost of a dead year passed in that damp and 
 lifeless effluence. But along the frontiers of the 
 woods there was an eddying dust of leaves and 
 small twigs, and part at least of the indeter- 
 minate rumour which filled the air was caused 
 by this frail lapping as of innumerable minute 
 wings. 
 
 In one of those leaf-quiet alleys, shrouded in a 
 black-green darkness save where in one spot the 
 gloom was illumined into a vivid brown, because 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 43 
 
 of a wandering beam of light from a turret in the 
 chateau, a man stood. The head was forwardly 
 inclined, the whole figure intent as a listening 
 animal. He and his shadow were as those flowers 
 of darkness whose nocturnal bloom may be seen 
 of none save in the shadowy land of dream. 
 
 When for a moment the wind-wavered beam of 
 light fell athwart his face — so dark and wild that 
 he might well have been taken for a nameless 
 creature of the woods — he moved. 
 
 With a sudden gesture he flung his arms above 
 his head. His shadow sprang to one side with 
 fantastic speed, leaping like a diver into the gulf 
 of darkness. 
 
 ' Annaik ! ' he cried. ' Annaik, Annaik ! ' 
 
 The moan of the wind out of the sea, the con- 
 fused noise of the wind's wings baffling through 
 the woods : no other answer than these, no other 
 sound. 
 
 1 Annaik, Annaik ! ' 
 
 There was pain as of a wounded beast in the 
 harsh cry of this haunter of the dark : but the 
 next moment it was as though the lost shadow 
 had leapt back, for a darkness came about the 
 
44 GREEN FIRE 
 
 man, and he lapsed into the obscurity as a wave 
 sinks into a wave. 
 
 But, later, out of the silence came a voice. 
 
 t Ah, Annaik ! ' it cried, ( ah, Annaik, forsooth ! 
 It is Annaik of Kerival you are, and I the dust 
 upon the land of your fathers — but, by the blood 
 of Ronan, it is only a woman you are ; and, if I 
 had you here, it is a fall of my fist you would be 
 having, ay, the stroke and the blow, for all that 
 I love you as I do, white woman, ay, and curse 
 you and yours for that loving ! ' 
 
 Then, once again, there was silence. Only the 
 screeching of the wind among the leaves and 
 tortured branches, only the deep roar of the 
 tempest at the heart of the forest, only the 
 thunder of the sea throbbing pulse-like through 
 the night. Nor when, a brief while later, a 
 white owl, swifter but not less silent than a drift 
 of vapour, swooped that way, was there living 
 creature in that solitary place. 
 
 The red-yellow beam still turned into brown 
 the black-green of that windy alley ; but the 
 man, and the shadow of him, and the pain of the 
 beast that was in him, and the cry of the baffled 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 45 
 
 soul, the cry that none might know or even guess, 
 of all this sorrow of the night nothing remained 
 save the red light lifting and falling through the 
 shadowy hair of what the poets of old called the 
 Dark Woman . . . Night. 
 
 Only, who may know if in that warmth and 
 glow within the House of Kerival, some sudden 
 menace from the outside world of life did not 
 knock at the heart of Annaik, where she, tall and 
 beautiful in her cream-white youth, and with her 
 mass of tawny hair, stood by Ynys, whose dusky 
 loveliness was not less than her own — both 
 radiant in the firelight, with laughter upon the 
 lips, and light within their eyes. 
 
 O flame that burns where fires of home are 
 lit : and O flame that burns in the heart to 
 whom life has not said, Awake : and O flame 
 that smoulders from death to life, and from life 
 to death, in the dumb lives of those to whom the 
 primrose way is closed ! Everywhere the burning 
 of the burning, the flame of the flame : pain and 
 the shadow of pain, joy, and the rapt breath of 
 joy, flame of the flame that, burning, destroyeth 
 not till the flame is no more. 
 
46 GREEN FIRE 
 
 It was the night of the home-coming of Alan. 
 So long had Ynys and Annaik looked forward to 
 this hour, that now hardly could they believe 
 the witness of their eyes when with eager glances 
 they scrutinised the new comer — their Alanik 
 of old. 
 
 He stood before the great fire of logs. Upon 
 his face the sharp, damp breath of the storm still 
 lingered, but in his eyes was a light brighter 
 than any dancing flame would cause, and in his 
 blood a pulse that leaped because of another 
 reason than that swift ride through the stormy 
 woods of Kerival. 
 
 At the red and stormy break of that day 
 Ynys had awaked with a song of joy in her 
 heart, that from hour to hour had found ex- 
 pression in birdlike carollings, little words and 
 fugitive phrases which rippled from her lips, the 
 sunshine-spray from the fount of life whereon 
 her heart swam as a nenuphar on an up welling 
 pool. Annaik also had waked at that dawn of 
 storm. She had risen in silence, and in silence 
 had remained all day, giving no sign that the 
 flame within her frayed the nerves of her heart. 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 47 
 
 Throughout the long hours of tempest, and 
 into that dusk wherein the voice of the sea 
 moved moaning across the land, laughter and 
 dream had alternated with Ynys. Annaik looked 
 at her strangely at times, but said nothing. 
 Once, standing in the twilight of the dark- 
 raftered room, Ynys clasped her hands across her 
 bosom and murmured, ' O heart be still : my 
 heaven is come. 1 And in that hour, and in that 
 place, she who was twin to her — strange irony 
 of motherhood, that should give birth in one 
 hour to Day and Night, for even as day and 
 night were these twain, so unlike in all things — 
 in that hour and in that place, Annaik also 
 clasped her hands across her bosom, and the 
 words that died across the shadow of her lips 
 were, ' O heart be still : my hell is near."* 
 
 And now he for whom both had waited, stood, 
 flooded in the red fireglow which leaped from 
 panel to panel, and from rafter to rafter, while, 
 without, the howling of the wind rose and fell 
 in prolonged monotonous cadences — anathemas 
 rather, whirled through a darkness full of be- 
 wilderment and terror. 
 
48 GREEN FIRE 
 
 As for Alan, it was indeed for joy to him to 
 stand there, home once more, with not only the 
 savagery of the tempest behind him, but, also left 
 behind, that unspeakably far off, bewilderingly re- 
 mote city of Paris whence he had so swiftly come. 
 
 It is said of an ancient poet of the druid days 
 that he had the power to see the lives of the 
 living, and these as though they were phantoms, 
 separate from the body. Was there not a young 
 king of Albainn who, in a perilous hour, dis- 
 covered this secret of old time, and knew how a 
 life may be hidden away from the body so that 
 none may know of it, save the wind that whispers 
 all things, and the tides of day and night which 
 bear all things upon their dark flood ? 
 
 King of Albainn, poet of the old time, not 
 alone three youthful dreamers would you have 
 seen there, in that storm-beset room. For there 
 you would have seen six figures standing side by 
 side. Three of these would have been Alan de 
 Kerival, and Ynys the Dark, and Annaik the 
 Fair : and of the other three, one would be of a 
 dusky-haired woman with starry, luminous eyes ; 
 and one a pale woman with a wealth of tawny 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 49 
 
 hair, with eyes aflame, meteors in a desert place ; 
 and one a man young and strong and fair to see 
 as Alan de Kerival, but round about him a 
 gloom, and through that gloom his eyes as stars 
 seen among the melancholy hills. 
 
 Happy laughter of the world that is always 
 young — happy, in that we are not all seers of old 
 or kings of Albainn ! For who, looking into the 
 mirrors of Life and seeing all that is to be seen, 
 would look again, save those few to whom Life 
 and Death have come sisterly and whispered the 
 secret that some have discerned, how these twain 
 are one and the same. 
 
 Nevertheless, in that happy hour for him, 
 Alan saw nothing of what Ynys feared. Annaik 
 had abruptly yielded to a strange gaiety, and 
 her swift laugh and gypsy smile made his heart 
 glad. 
 
 Never had he seen, even in Paris, women more 
 beautiful. Deep-set as his heart was in the 
 beauty of Ynys, he found himself admiring that 
 of Annaik with new eyes. Truly, she was just 
 such a woman as he had often imagined when 
 Ian had recited to him the ballad of the Sons of 
 P 
 
50 GREEN FIRE 
 
 Usna or that of how Dermid and Graine fled from 
 the wrath of Fionn. 
 
 And they, too, looking at their tall cousin, with 
 his wavy brown hair, broad low brows, grey-blue 
 eyes, and erect carriage, thought him the come- 
 liest man to be seen in France ; and each in 
 her own way was proud and glad, though one, 
 also, with killing pain. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE DREAM AND THE DREAMERS 
 
 Soon after supper, Annaik withdrew. Ynys and 
 Alan were glad to be alone, and yet Annaik's 
 absence perturbed them. In going she bade 
 good-night to her cousin, but took no notice 
 of her sister. 
 
 At first the lovers were silent, though they had 
 much to say, and in particular Alan was anxious 
 to know what it was that Ynys had alluded to 
 in her letter when she warned him that unfore- 
 seen difficulties were about their way. 
 
 It was pleasant to sit in that low-roofed dark 
 old room, and feel the world fallen away from 
 them. Hand in hand they looked at each other 
 lovingly, or dreamed into the burning logs, seeing 
 there all manner of beautiful visions. Outside, 
 the wind still moaned and howled, though with 
 
52 GREEN FIRE 
 
 less of savage violence, and the rain had 
 ceased. 
 
 For a time Ynys would have no talk of Kerival ; 
 Alan was to tell all he could concerning his life 
 in Paris, what he had done, what he had dreamed 
 of, and what he hoped for now. But at last he 
 laughingly refused to speak more of himself, and 
 pressed her to reveal what had been a source of 
 anxiety. 
 
 1 You know, dear,' she said, as she rose and 
 leaned against the mantelpiece, her tall figure and 
 dusky hair catching a warm glow from the fire, 
 6 you know how pitiable is this feud between my 
 father and mother — how for years they have 
 seen next to nothing of each other; how they 
 live in the same house and yet are strangers. 
 You know, too, how more than ever unfortunate 
 this is, for themselves, and for Annaik and me, 
 on account of our mother being an invalid, and 
 of our father being hardly less frail. Well, I have 
 discovered that the chief, if not indeed the only, 
 abiding source of misunderstanding is you, dear 
 Alan!' 
 
 < But why, Ynys?' 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 53 
 
 * Ah, why ? That is, of course, what I cannot 
 tell you. Have you no suspicion, no idea ? ' 
 
 'None. All I know is that M. de Kerival 
 allows me to bear his name, but that he dislikes, 
 if, indeed, he does not actually hate me. 1 
 
 'There is some reason. I came upon him 
 talking to my mother a short time ago. She 
 had told him of your imminent return. 
 
 1 " I never wish to see his face," my father cried 
 with fierce vehemence: then, seeing me, he 
 refrained. 1 
 
 'Well, I shall know all the day after to- 
 morrow. Meanwhile, Ynys, we have the night 
 to ourselves. Dear, I want to learn one thing. 
 What does Annaik know ? Does she know that 
 we love each other? Does she know that we 
 have told each other of this love, and that 
 we are secretly betrothed ? ' 
 
 ' She must know that I love you, and some- 
 times I think she knows that you love me. But 
 . . . O Alan, I am so unhappy about it ! . . . 
 I fear that Annaik loves you also, and that this 
 will come between us all. It has already frozen 
 her to me and me to her.' 
 
54 GREEN FIRE 
 
 Alan looked at Ynys with startled eyes. He 
 knew Annaik better than any one did ; and he 
 dreaded the insurgent bitterness of that wild and 
 wayward nature. Moreover, in a sense he loved 
 her, and it was for sorrow to him that she should 
 suffer in a way wherein he could be of no help. 
 
 At that moment the door opened, and Matieu, 
 a white-haired old servant, bowing ceremoniously, 
 remarked that Monsieur le Marquis desired to 
 see Mamzell Ynys immediately. 
 
 Ynys glanced round, told Matieu that she 
 would follow, and then turned to Alan. How 
 beautiful she was, he thought : more and more 
 beautiful every time he saw her. Ah, fair 
 mystery of love, which puts a glory about the 
 one loved ; a glory that is no phantasmal light, 
 but the realised beauty evoked by seeing eyes 
 and calling heart. 
 
 On her face was a wonderful colour, a delicate 
 flush that came and went. Again and again 
 she made a characteristic gesture, putting her 
 right hand to her forehead and then through 
 the shadowy wavy hair which Alan loved so well 
 and ever thought of as the fragrant dusk. How 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 55 
 
 glad he was that she was tall and lithe, graceful 
 as a young birch; that she was strong and 
 kissed brown and sweet of sun and wind ; that 
 her beauty was old as the world, and fresh as 
 every dawn, and new as each recurrent Spring. 
 No wonder he was a poet, since Ynys was the 
 living poem who inspired all that was best in 
 his life, all that was fervent in his brain. 
 
 Thought, kindred to this, kept him a long 
 while by the fire in deep reverie, after Ynys 
 had thrilled him by her parting kisses, and had 
 gone to her father. He realised, then, how it 
 was she gave him the sense of womanhood as no 
 other woman had done. In her, he recognised 
 the symbol as well as the individual. All women 
 shared in his homage because of her. His deep 
 love for her, his ever-growing passion, could evoke 
 from him a courtesy, a chivalry, towards all 
 women which only the callous or the coarse failed 
 to note. She was his magic. The light of their 
 love was upon everything ; everywhere he found 
 synonyms and analogues of ' Ynys.' Deeply as 
 he loved beauty, he had learned to love it far 
 more keenly and understandingly, because of 
 
56 GREEN FIRE 
 
 her. He saw now through the accidental, and 
 everywhere discerned the eternal beauty, the 
 echoes of whose wandering are in every heart 
 and brain, though few discern the white vision 
 or hear the haunting voice. 
 
 And with his love had come knowledge of 
 many things hidden from him before. Sequences 
 were revealed where he had perceived only blind 
 inconsequence. Nature became for him a scroll, 
 a palimpsest with daily mutations. With each 
 change he found a word, a clue, leading to the 
 fuller elucidation of that primeval knowledge 
 which, fragmentarily, from age to age has been 
 painfully lost, regained and lost again, though 
 never yet wholly irrecoverable. 
 
 Through this new knowledge, too, he had 
 come to understand the supreme wonder and 
 promise, the supreme hope of our human life, in 
 the mystery of motherhood. All this and much 
 more he owed to Ynys, and to his love for her. 
 She was all that a woman can be to a man. 
 In her he found the divine abstractions which 
 are the beacons of the human soul in its obscure 
 wayfaring — Romance, Love, Beauty. It was not 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 57 
 
 enough that she gave him romance, that she 
 gave him love, that she was the most beautiful 
 of women in his eyes. When he thought of the 
 one, it was to see the starry eyes and to hear 
 the charmed voice of Romance herself, in the 
 voice and in the eyes of Ynys ; when he thought 
 of Love it was to hear Ynys's heart beating, 
 to listen to the secret rhythms in Ynys's brain, 
 to feel the life-giving sunflood that was in her 
 pure but intense and glowing passion. 
 
 Thus it was that she had for him that im- 
 mutable attraction which a few women have 
 for a few men : an appeal, a charm, that atmo- 
 sphere of romance, that air of ideal beauty, 
 wherein lies the secret of all passionate art. 
 The world without wonder, the world without 
 mystery ! That indeed is the rainbow without 
 colours, the sunrise without living gold, the 
 noon void of light. 
 
 To him, moreover, there was but one woman. 
 In Ynys he had found her. This exquisite 
 prototype was at once a child of nature, a 
 beautiful pagan, a daughter of the sun, was 
 at once this and a soul alive with the spiritual 
 
58 GREEN FIRE 
 
 life, intent upon the deep meanings lurking 
 everywhere, wrought to wonder even by the 
 common habitudes of life, to mystery even by 
 the familiar and the explicable. Indeed, the 
 mysticism which was part of the spiritual in- 
 heritance come with her northern strain was one 
 of the deep bonds which united them. 
 
 What if both at times were wrought too 
 deeply by this beautiful dream ? What if the 
 inner life triumphed now and then, and each 
 forgot the deepest instinct of life, that here the 
 body is overlord and the soul but a divine con- 
 sort ? There are three races of man. There is 
 the myriad race which loses all, through (not 
 bestiality, for the brute world is clean and sane) 
 perverted animalism ; and there is the myriad 
 race which denounces humanity, and pins all its 
 faith and joy to a life the very conditions of 
 whose existence are incompatible with the law to 
 which we are subject, the sole law, the law of 
 nature. Then there is that small untoward clan, 
 which knows the divine call of the spirit through 
 the brain, and the secret whisper of the soul 
 in the heart, and for ever perceives the veils of 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 59 
 
 mystery and the rainbows of hope upon our 
 human horizons : which hears and sees, and yet 
 turns wisely, meanwhile, to the life of the green 
 earth, of which we are part, to the common 
 kindred of living things, with which we are at 
 one — is content, in a word, to live, because of 
 the dream that makes living so mysteriously 
 sweet and poignant; and to dream, because of 
 the commanding immediacy of life. 
 
 As yet, of course, Alan and Ynys had known 
 little of the vicissitudes of aroused life. What 
 they did know, foresee, was due rather to the 
 second-sight of the imagination than to the keen 
 knowledge of experience. 
 
 In Alan, Ynys found all that her heart craved. 
 She discovered this nearly too late. A year 
 before this last home-coming of her cousin, she 
 had been formally betrothed to Andrik de 
 Morvan, the friend of her childhood, and for 
 whom she had a true affection, and in that 
 betrothal had been quietly glad. When, one 
 midwinter day, she and Alan walked through 
 an upland wood and looked across the snowy 
 pastures and the white slopes beyond, all aglow 
 
60 GREEN FIRE 
 
 with sunlight, and then suddenly turned towards 
 each other, and saw in the eyes of each a wonder- 
 ful light, and the next moment were heart to 
 heart, it was all a revelation. 
 
 For long she did not realise what it meant. 
 On that unforgettable day, when they had left 
 the forest-ridge and were near Kerival again, she 
 had sat for a time on one of the rude cattle-gates 
 which are frequent in these woodlands, while 
 Alan had leant beside her, looking up with eyes 
 too eloquent, and speaking of what he dreamed, 
 with sweet stammering speech of new-found love. 
 
 How she had struggled, mentally, with her 
 duty, as she conceived it, towards Andrik. She 
 was betrothed to him; he loved her; she loved 
 him, too, although even already she realised that 
 there is a love which is not only invincible and 
 indestructible but that comes unsought, has no 
 need for human conventions, is neither moral nor 
 immoral, but simply all-potent and thenceforth 
 sovereign. To yield to that may be wrong : but 
 if so, it is wrong to yield to the call of hunger, 
 the cry of thirst, the whisper of sleep, the breath 
 of ill, the summons of death. It comes, and that 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 61 
 
 is all. The green earth may be another En- 
 dymion, and may dream that the cold moonshine 
 is all in all : but when the sun rises, and a new 
 heat and glory and passion of life are come, then 
 Endymion simply awakes. 
 
 It had been a sadness to her to have to tell 
 Andrik she no longer loved him as he was fain 
 to be loved. He would have no finality, then : 
 he held her to the bond — and in Brittany there 
 is a pledge akin to the ' hand-fast , of the north, 
 which makes a betrothal almost as binding as 
 marriage. 
 
 Andrik de Morvan had gone to the Marquis 
 de Kerival, and told him what Ynys had said. 
 
 ' She is but a girl,' the Seigneur remarked 
 coldly. ' And you are wrong in thinking she 
 can be in love with any one else. There is no 
 one for whom she can care so much as for you : 
 no one whom she has met with whom she could 
 mate : no one with whom I would allow her to 
 mate.' 
 
 ' But that matters little if she will not marry 
 me ! ' the young man had urged. 
 
 t My daughter is my daughter, de Morvan. I 
 
62 GREEN FIRE 
 
 cannot compel her to marry you. I know her 
 well enough to be sure that she would ignore 
 any command of this kind. But women are 
 fools : and one can get them to do what one 
 wants in one way if not in another. Let her be, 
 a while. 1 
 
 'But the betrothal !' 
 
 t Let it stand. But do not press it. Indeed, 
 go away for a year. You are heir to your 
 mother's estates in Touraine. Go there : work : 
 learn all you can. Meanwhile, write occasionally 
 to Ynys. Do not address her as your betrothed, 
 but at the same time let her see that it is the 
 lover who writes. Then, after a few months, 
 confide that your absence is due solely to her: 
 that you cannot live without her : and that, after 
 a vain exile, you write to ask if you may come 
 and see her. They are all the same. It is the 
 same thing with my mares, for which Kerival is 
 so famous. Some are wild, some are docile, some 
 skittish, some vicious, some good, a few flawless 
 — but . . . well, they are all mares. One knows 
 a mare is not a sphinx. These complexities of 
 which we hear so much, what are they ? Spin- 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 63 
 
 drift. The sea is simply the sea all the same. 
 The tide ebbs, though the poets reverse nature. 
 Ebb and flow, the lifting wind, the lifted wave : 
 we know the way of it all. It has its mystery, 
 its beauty ; but we don't really expect to see a 
 nereid in the hollow of the wave, or to catch the 
 echo of a triton in the call of the wind. As for 
 Venus Anadyomene, the foam of which she was 
 made is the froth in poets 1 brains. Believe me, 
 Andrik, my friend, women are simply women : 
 creatures not yet wholly tamed, but tractable in 
 the main, delightful, valuable often, but certainly 
 not worth the tribute of passion and pain they 
 obtain from foolish men like yourself.' 
 
 With this worldly wisdom Andrik de Morvan 
 had gone home unconvinced. He loved Ynys : 
 and sophistries were an ineffectual balm. 
 
 But as for Ynys, she had long made up her 
 mind. Betrothal or no betrothal, she belonged 
 now only to one man, and that man Alan de 
 Kerival. She was his and his alone, by every 
 natural right. How could she help the accident 
 by which she had cared for Andrik before she 
 loved Alan ? Now, indeed, it would be sacrilege 
 
64 GREEN FIRE 
 
 to be other than wholly Alan's. Was her heart 
 not his, and her life with her heart, and with 
 both her deathless devotion ? 
 
 Alan, she knew, trusted her absolutely. Before 
 he went back to Paris, after their love was no 
 longer a secret, he had never once asked her to 
 forfeit anything of her intimacy with Andrik, 
 nor had he even urged the open cancelling of the 
 betrothal. But, she was well aware, his own 
 absolute loyalty involved for him a like loyalty 
 from her: and she knew that forgiveness does 
 not belong to those natures which stake all upon 
 a single die. 
 
 And so the matter stood thus still. Ynys and 
 Andrik de Morvan were nominally betrothed : 
 and not only the Marquis and the Marquise de 
 Kerival, but Andrik himself, looked upon the 
 bond as absolute. 
 
 Perhaps Lois de Kerival was not without some 
 suspicion as to how matters were between the be- 
 trothed pair. Certainly she knew that Ynys was 
 not one who would give up any real or imagined 
 happiness because of a conventional arrangement, 
 or on account of any conventional duty. 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 65 
 
 In Alan, Ynys found all that he found in her. 
 When she looked at him, she wondered how she 
 could ever have dreamed of Andrik as a lover, for 
 Alan was all that Andrik was not. How proud 
 and glad she felt because of his great height and 
 strength, his vivid features with their grey-blue 
 eyes and spirituel expression, his wavy brown 
 hair, a very type of youthful and beautiful 
 manhood. Still more she revered and loved the 
 inner Allan whom she knew so well, and recog- 
 nised with a proud humility that this lover of 
 hers, whom the great Daniel Dare had spoken of 
 as a man of genius, was not only her knight, but 
 her comrade, her mate, her ideal. 
 
 Often the peasants of Kerival had speculated 
 if the young seigneur would join hands with her 
 or with Annaik. Some hoped the one, some the 
 other : but those who knew Alan otherwise than 
 merely by sight felt certain that Ynys was the 
 future bride. 
 
 ' They are made for each other,'' old Jeanne 
 Mael, the village authority, was wont to exclaim ; 
 4 and the good God will bring them together soon 
 or late. Tis a fair sweet couple they are : none 
 
 E 
 
66 GREEN FIRE 
 
 so handsome anywhere. That tall dark lass will 
 be a good mother when her hour comes : an 1 the 
 child o' him an 1 her should be the bonniest in 
 the whole wide world. ' 
 
 With that all who saw them together agreed. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE WALKER IN THE NIGHT 
 
 It was an hour from midnight when Alan rose, 
 opened a window, and looked out. The storm 
 was over. He could see the stars glistening like 
 silver fruit among the upper branches of the elms. 
 Behind the great cypress known as the Fate of 
 Kerival there was a golden radiance, as though a 
 disc of radiant bronze were being slowly wheeled 
 round and round, invisible itself, but casting a 
 quivering gleam upon the fibrous undersides of 
 the cypress-spires. Soon the moon would lift 
 upward, and her paling gold become foam-white 
 along the wide reaches of the forest. 
 
 The wind had suddenly fallen. In this abrupt 
 lapse into silence there was something mysterious. 
 
 After so much violence, after that wild, tem- 
 pestuous cry, such stillness ! There was no more 
 
68 GREEN FIRE 
 
 than a faint rustling sound, as though invisible 
 feet were stealthily flying along the pathway of 
 the upper boughs, and through the dim defiles in 
 the dense coverts of oak and beech in the very 
 heart of the woods. Only, from hitherward of 
 the unseen dunes, floated a melancholy sighing 
 refrain, the echo of the eddying sea-breath 
 among the pines. Beyond the last sands the 
 deep hollow boom of the sea itself. 
 
 To stay indoors seemed to Alan a wanton 
 forfeiture of beauty. The fragrance of the 
 forest intoxicated him. Spring was come indeed. 
 This wild storm had ruined nothing, for at its 
 fiercest it had swept overhead : and on the morrow 
 the virginal green world would be more beauti- 
 ful than ever. Everywhere the green fire of 
 Spring would be litten anew. A green flame 
 would pass from meadow to hedgerow, from 
 hedgerow to the tangled thickets of bramble 
 and dog-rose, from the underwoods to the inmost 
 forest glades. Everywhere song would be to the 
 birds, everywhere young life would pulse, every- 
 where the rhythm of a new rapture would run 
 rejoicing. The miracle of Spring would be 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 69 
 
 accomplished in the sight of all men, of all birds 
 and beasts, of all green life. Each in its kind 
 would have a swifter throb in the red blood or 
 the vivid sap. 
 
 No ; he could not wait. No, Alan added to 
 himself with a smile, not even though to sleep 
 in the House of Kerival was to be beneath the 
 same roof as Ynys — to be but a few yards, a 
 passage, a corridor away. Ah, for sure, he could 
 dream his dream as well out there among the 
 gleaming boughs, in the golden sheen of the 
 moon, under the stars. Was there not the 
 silence for deep peace, and the voice of the 
 unseen sea for echo to the deep tides of love 
 which surged obscurely in his heart ? Yes ; he 
 would go out to that beautiful redemption of 
 the night. How often, in fevered Paris, he had 
 known that healing, either when his gaze was 
 held by the quiet stars, as he kept his hours- 
 long vigil, or when he escaped westward along 
 the banks of the Seine, and could wander undis- 
 turbed across grassy spaces or under shadowy 
 boughs. 
 
 In the great hall of the manor he found 
 
70 GREEN FIRE 
 
 white - haired Matieu asleep in his wicker 
 chair. The old man silently opened the heavy 
 oaken door, and with a smile, which somewhat 
 perplexed Alan, bowed to him as he passed 
 forth. 
 
 Could it be a space only of a few hours that 
 divided him from his recent arrival, he wondered. 
 The forest was no longer the same. Then it 
 was swept by the wind, lashed by the rains, 
 and was everywhere tortured into a tempestuous 
 music. Now it was so still, save for a ceaseless 
 faint dripping from wet leaves and the conduits 
 of a myriad sprays and branches, that he could 
 hear the occasional shaking of the wings of 
 hidden birds, ruffling out their plumage be- 
 cause of the moonlit quietudes that were come 
 again. 
 
 And then, too, he had seen Ynys : had held her 
 hand in his ; had looked in her beautiful hazel- 
 green eyes, dusky and wonderful as a starlit 
 gloaming because of the depth of her dear love ; 
 had pressed his lips to hers, and felt the throb- 
 bing of her heart against his own. There, in the 
 forest-edge, it was difficult to realise all this. It 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 71 
 
 would be time to turn soon, to walk back along 
 the sycamore-margined Seine embankment, to 
 reach the Tour de Tile and be at his post in the 
 observatory again ! Then he glanced backward, 
 and saw a red light shining from the room where 
 the Marquis de Kerival sat up late night after 
 night, and he wondered if Ynys were still there, 
 or if she were now in her room and asleep, or if 
 she lay in a waking dream. 
 
 For a time he stared at this beacon. Then, 
 troubled by many thoughts, but most by his 
 love, he moved slowly into one of the beech- 
 avenues which radiated from the fantastic medi- 
 aeval sundial at the end of the tulip-garden in 
 front of the chateau. 
 
 While the moon slowly lifted from branch to 
 branch, a transient stir of life came into the 
 forest. 
 
 Here and there he heard low cries, sometimes 
 breaking into abrupt eddies of arrested song : 
 thrushes, he knew, ever swift to slide their music 
 out against any tide of light. Once or twice a 
 blackcap, in one of the beeches near the open, 
 sang so poignantly a brief strain, that he thought 
 
72 GREEN FIRE 
 
 it that of a nightingale. Later, in an oak-glade, 
 he heard the unmistakable song itself. 
 
 The sea-sound came hollowly under the boughs 
 like a spent billow. Instinctively he turned that 
 way, and so crossed a wide glade that opened 
 on the cypress - alley to the west of the 
 chateau. 
 
 Just as he emerged upon this glade he thought 
 he saw a stooping figure glide swiftly athwart the 
 northern end of it and disappear among the 
 cypresses. Startled, he stood still. 
 
 No one stirred. Nothing moved. He could 
 hear no sound save the faint sighing of the wind- 
 eddy among the pines, the dull rhythmic beat 
 of the sea falling heavily upon the sands. 
 
 ' It must have been a delusion,' he muttered. 
 Yet, for the moment, he had felt certain that the 
 crouching figure of a man had moved swiftly out 
 of the shadow of the solitary wide-spreading 
 thorn he knew so well, and had disappeared into 
 the darker shadow of the cypress-alley. 
 
 After all, what did it matter ? It could only 
 be some poor fellow poaching. With a smile, 
 Alan remembered how often he had sinned like- 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 73 
 
 wise. He would listen, however, and give the 
 man a fright, for he knew that Tristran de 
 Kerival was stern in his resentment against 
 poachers, partly because he was liberal in certain 
 woodland-freedom he granted on the sole condi- 
 tion that none of the peasants ever came within 
 the home-domain. 
 
 Soon, however, he was convinced that he was 
 mistaken. Deep silence prevailed everywhere. 
 Almost, he fancied, he could hear the soft fall of 
 the dew. A low whirring sound showed that a 
 nightjar had already begun his summer- wooing. 
 Now that, as he knew from Ynys, the cuckoo was 
 come, and that the swallows had suddenly multi- 
 plied from a score of pioneers into a battalion 
 of ever-flying darts ; now that he had listened 
 to the nightingales calling through the moonlit 
 woods, and had heard the love-note of the night- 
 jar, the hot weather must be come at last — that 
 glorious tide of golden life which flows from 
 April to June, and makes them the joy of the 
 world. 
 
 Slowly he walked across the glade. At the old 
 thorn he stopped, and leaned awhile against its 
 
74 GREEN FIRE 
 
 rugged twisted bole, recalling incident after 
 incident associated with it. 
 
 It was strangely restful there. Around him 
 was the quiet sea of moonlight : yonder, behind 
 the cypresses and the pine-crowned dunes, was 
 the quiet sea of moving waters : yet, in the one, 
 there was scarce less of silence than in the other. 
 Ah, he remembered abruptly, on just such a 
 night, years ago, he and Annaik had stood long 
 there, hand in hand, listening to a nightingale. 
 What a strange girl she was, even then. 
 Well he recalled how, at the end of the song, 
 and when the little brown singer had slipped 
 from its bough like a stone slung from a sling, 
 Annaik had laughed, though he knew not at 
 what, and had all at once unfastened her hair, 
 and let its tawny bronze-red mass fall about her 
 shoulders. She was so beautiful and wild, that 
 he had clasped her in his arms, and had kissed 
 her again and again. And Annaik . . . oh, he 
 remembered, half shyly, half exultantly . . . she 
 had laughed again, but more low, and had tied 
 the long drifts of her hair around his neck like a 
 blood-red scarf. 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 75 
 
 It gave him a strange emotion to recall all 
 this. Did Annaik also think of it ever, he 
 wondered. 
 
 Then, too, had they not promised somewhat to 
 each other ? Yes. . . . 
 
 Annaik had said, 'One night we shall come 
 here again, and then if you do not love me as 
 much as you do now, I shall strangle you with 
 my hair : and if you love me more we shall go 
 away into the forest, and never return, or not for 
 long, long: but if you do not love me at all, 
 then you are to tell me so, and I will ' 
 
 6 What ? ' he had asked, when she stopped 
 abruptly. 
 
 At that, however, she had said no more as to 
 what was in her mind, but had asked him to 
 carve upon the thorn the ? A ' of her name, and 
 the ' A ' of his, into a double ' A. 1 Yes, of course, 
 he had done this : where was it, he pondered. 
 Surely midway on the southward side, for then 
 as now the moonlight would be there. 
 
 With an eagerness of which he was conscious 
 he slipped from where he leaned, and examined 
 the bole of the tree. A heavy branch intervened. 
 
76 GREEN FIRE 
 
 This he caught and withheld, and the light 
 flooded upon the gnarled trunk. 
 
 With a start, Alan almost relinquished the 
 branch. There, unmistakable, was a large carven 
 6 A,' but not only was it the old double ' A ' made 
 into a single letter, but clearly the change had 
 been made quite recently, apparently within a 
 few hours. Moreover, it was now linked to 
 another letter. The legend ran : A. <§• J. 
 
 Puzzled, he looked close. There could be no 
 mistake. The cutting was recent. The «/., in- 
 deed, might have been that moment done. 
 Suddenly an idea flashed into his mind. He 
 stooped and examined the mossed roots. Yes ; 
 there were the fragments. He took one, and put 
 it between his teeth : the wood was soft, and had 
 the moisture of fibre recently severed. 
 
 Who was ' J.' ? Alan pondered over every 
 name he could think of. He knew no one whose 
 baptismal name began thus, with the exception 
 of Jervaise de Morvan, the brother of Andrik, 
 and he was married and resident in distant 
 Pondicherry. Otherwise there was but Jak 
 Bourzak, the woodcutter — a bent, broken-down 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 77 
 
 old man, who could not have cut the letters for 
 the good reason that he was unable to write, and 
 was so ignorant that, even in that remote region, 
 he was called Jak the Stupid. Alan was still 
 pondering over this when suddenly the stillness 
 was broken by the loud screaming of peacocks. 
 
 Kerival was famous for these birds, of which 
 the peasantry stood in superstitious awe. In- 
 deed, a legend was current to the effect that 
 Tristran de Kerival maintained these resplendent 
 creatures because they were the souls of his 
 ancestors, or of such of them as before death had 
 not been able to gain absolution for their sins. 
 When they were heard crying harshly before rain 
 or at sundown, or sometimes in the moonlight, 
 the hearers shuddered.   The lost souls of Keri- 
 var became a saying, and there were prophets 
 here and there who foreboded ill for Tristran 
 the Silent, or some one near and dear to him, 
 whenever that strange clamour rang forth un- 
 expectedly. 
 
 Alan himself was surprised, startled. The night 
 was so still, no further storm was imminent, and 
 the moon had been risen for some time. Possibly 
 
78 GREEN FIRE 
 
 the peacocks had strolled into the cypress-alley, 
 to strut to and fro in the moonshine, as their 
 wont was in the wooing-days, and two of them 
 had come into jealous dispute. 
 
 Still, that continuous harsh tumult seemed 
 rather to have the note of alarm than of quarrel. 
 Alan walked to the seaward side of the thorn, 
 but still kept within its shadow. 
 
 The noise was now not only clamant but start- 
 ling. The savage screaming, like that of barbaric 
 trumpets, filled the night. 
 
 Swiftly the listener crossed the glade, and was 
 soon among the cypresses. There, while the 
 dull thud of the falling seas was more than 
 ever audible, and the screams of the peacocks 
 were so insistent, that he had ears for these 
 alone. 
 
 At the easter end of the alley the glade broke 
 away into scattered pines, and from these swelled 
 a series of low dunes. Alan could see them clearly 
 from where he stood, under the boughs of a huge 
 yew, one of several that grew here and there 
 among their solemn columnar kin. 
 
 His gaze was upon this open space when, 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 79 
 
 abruptly, he started A tall, slim figure, coming 
 from the shore, moved slowly inland across the 
 dunes. 
 
 Who could this walker in the dark be ? The 
 shadowy Walker in the Night herself, mayhap : 
 the dreaded soulless woman who wanders at 
 dead of night through forests, or by desolate 
 shores, or by the banks of the perilous marais. 
 
 Often he had heard of her. When any man 
 met this woman his fate depended on whether he 
 saw her before she caught sight of him. If she 
 saw him first, she had but to sing her wild strange 
 song, and he would have to go to her ; and when 
 he was before her, two flames would come out of 
 her eyes, and one flame would burn up his life as 
 though it were dry tinder, and the other would 
 wrap round his soul like a scarlet shawl, and she 
 would take it and live with it in a cavern under- 
 ground for a year and a day. And on that last 
 day she would let it go, as a hare is let go a fur- 
 long beyond a greyhound. Then it would fly 
 like a windy shadow from glade to glade, or from 
 dune to dune, in the vain hope to reach a wayside 
 Calvary : but ever in vain. Sometimes the Holy 
 
80 GREEN FIRE 
 
 Tree would almost be reached; then, with a 
 gliding swiftness, like a flood racing down a 
 valley, the Walker in the Night would be along- 
 side the fugitive. Now and again unhappy night- 
 farers — unhappy they, for sure, for never does weal 
 remain with any one who hears what no human 
 ear should hearken — would be startled by a 
 sudden laughing in the darkness. This was when 
 some such terrible chase had happened, and when 
 the creature of the night had taken the captive 
 soul, in the last moments of the last hour of the 
 last day of its possible redemption, and rent it this 
 way and that, as a hawk scatters the feathered 
 fragments of its mutilated quarry. 
 
 Alan thought of this wild legend and shuddered. 
 Years ago he had been foolhardy enough to wish 
 to meet the phantom, to see her before she saw 
 him, and to put a spell upon her. For, if this 
 were possible, he could compel her to whisper 
 some of her secret lore, and she could give him 
 spells to keep him scatheless till old age. 
 
 But, as with fearful gaze he stared at the figure 
 which so leisurely moved towards the cypress- 
 alley, he was puzzled by some vague resemblance, 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 81 
 
 by something familiar. The figure was that of a 
 woman, unmistakably ; and she moved as though 
 she were in a dream. 
 
 But who could it be, there, in that lonely place, 
 at that hour of the night ? Who would venture 
 or care . . . 
 
 In a flash all was clear. It was Annaik. 
 
 There was no room for doubt. He might have 
 known her lithe walk, her wildwood grace, her 
 peculiar carriage ; but before recognition of these 
 had come, he had caught a glimpse of her hair in 
 the moonlight. It was like burnished brass in 
 that yellow shine. There was no other such hair 
 in the world, he believed. 
 
 But . . . Annaik ! What could she be doing 
 there? How had she been able to leave the 
 chateau ? When had she stolen forth ? Where 
 had she wandered? Whither was she going? To 
 what end ? 
 
 These and other thoughts stormed through 
 Alan's mind. Almost, he muttered below his 
 breath, almost he would rather have seen the 
 Walker in the Night. 
 
 As she drew nearer he could see her as clearly 
 F 
 
82 GREEN FIRE 
 
 as though it were daylight. She appeared to be 
 thinking deeply, and ever and again to be murmur- 
 ing disconnected phrases. His heart smote him 
 when he saw her twice raise her arms and then 
 wring her hands, as if in sore straits of sorrow. 
 
 He did not stir. He would wait, he thought. 
 It might add to Annaik's strange grief, if grief 
 it were, to betray his presence. Again, was it 
 possible that she was there to meet some one — 
 to encounter the t J.' whose initial was beside her 
 own on the old thorn ? How pale she was, he 
 noticed. A few yards away her dress caught; 
 she hesitated, slowly disengaged herself, but did 
 not advance again. 
 
 For the third time she wrung her hands. 
 
 What could it mean? Alan was about to move 
 forward when he heard her voice. 
 
 ' O Alan, Alan, Alan ! ' 
 
 What . . . had she seen him? He flushed 
 there in the shadow, and words rose to his lips. 
 Then he was silent, for she spoke again. 
 
 ' 1 hate her ... I hate her . . . not for her- 
 self, no, no, no . . . but because she has taken 
 you from me. Why does Ynys have you, all of 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 83 
 
 you. when I have loved you all along ? None of 
 us knew anything — none, till last Noel. Then 
 we knew ; only neither you nor Ynys knew that 
 I loved you as a soul in hell loves the memory of 
 its earthly joy.'' 
 
 Strange words, there in that place, at that 
 hour; but far stranger the passionless voice in 
 which the passionate words were uttered. Be- 
 wildered, Alan leaned forward intent. The words 
 had waned to a whisper, but were now inco- 
 herent. Fragmentary phrases, irrelevant words, 
 what could it all mean ? 
 
 Suddenly an idea made him start. He moved 
 slightly, so as to catch the full flood of a moon- 
 beam as it fell on Annaik's face. 
 
 Yes, he was right. Her eyes were open, but 
 were fixed in an unseeing stare. For the first 
 time, too, he noted that she was clad simply 
 in a long dressing-gown. Her feet were bare, 
 and were glistening with the wet they had 
 gathered ; on her lustrous hair, nothing but the 
 moonlight. 
 
 He had remembered. Both Annaik and Ynys 
 had a tendency to somnambulism, a trait in- 
 
84 GREEN FIRE 
 
 herited from their father. It had been cured 
 years ago, he had understood. But here — here 
 was proof that Annaik, at any rate, was still 
 subject to that mysterious malady of sleep. 
 
 That she was absolutely trance-bound he saw 
 clearly. But what he should do — that puzzled, 
 that bewildered him. 
 
 Slowly Annaik, after a brief hesitancy when he 
 fancied she was about to awake, moved forward 
 again. 
 
 She came so close that almost she brushed 
 against him ; would have done so, indeed, but 
 that he was hidden from contact as well as from 
 sight by the boughs of the yew, which on that 
 side swept to the ground. 
 
 Alan put out his hand. Then he withdrew it. 
 No, he thought, he would let her go unmolested, 
 and if possible unawaked ; but he would follow 
 her, lest evil befell. She passed. His nerves 
 thrilled. What was this strange emotion that 
 gave him a sensation almost as though he had 
 seen his own wraith ? But different . . . for, 
 oh ! he could not wait to think about that, he 
 muttered. 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 85 
 
 He was about to stoop and emerge from the 
 yew-boughs, when he heard a sound which made 
 him stop abruptly. 
 
 It was a step ; of that he felt sure. And at 
 hand, too. The next moment he was glad he 
 had not disclosed himself, for a crouching figure 
 stealthily followed Annaik. 
 
 Surely that was the same figure he had seen 
 cross the glade, the figure that had slipped from 
 the thorn ? 
 
 If so, could it be the person who had cut the 
 letter ' J ' on the bark of the tree ? The man 
 kept so much in the shadow that it was difficult 
 to obtain a glimpse of his face. Alan waited. 
 In a second or two he would have to pass the 
 yew. 
 
 Just before the mysterious pursuer reached 
 the old tree, he stopped. Alan furtively 
 glanced to his left. He saw that Annaik had 
 suddenly halted. She stood intent, as though 
 listening. Possibly she had awaked. He saw 
 her lips move. She spoke, or called something : 
 what, he could not hear because of the intermit- 
 tent screaming of the peacocks. 
 
86 GREEN FIRE 
 
 When he looked at the man in the shadow he 
 started. A moonbeam had penetrated the 
 obscurity, and the face was white against the 
 black background of a cypress. 
 
 Alan recognised the man in a moment. It 
 was Jud Kerbastiou, the forester. What . . . 
 was it possible : could he be the ' J ' who had 
 linked his initial with that of Annaik ? 
 
 It was incredible. The man was not only a 
 boor, but one with rather an ill repute. At any 
 rate he was known to be a poacher as well as a 
 woodlander of the old Breton kind — men who 
 would never live save in the forest, any more 
 than a gypsy would become a clerk and live in 
 a street. 
 
 It was said among the peasants of Kerival 
 that his father, old Iouenn Kerbastiou, the 
 charcoal-burner, was an illegitimate brother of 
 the late Marquis — so that Jud or Judik as he 
 was generally called, was a blood-relation of the 
 great folk at the chateau. Once this had been 
 hinted to the Marquis Tristran. It was for the 
 first and last time. Since then, Jud Kerbas- 
 tiou had become more morose than ever, and 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 87 
 
 was seldom seen among his fellows. When not 
 with his infirm old father, at the hut in the 
 woods that were to the eastward of the forest- 
 hamlet of Ploumael, he was away in the densely 
 wooded reaches to the south. Occasionally he 
 was seen upon the slopes of the Black Hills, but 
 this was only in winter, when he crossed over into 
 Upper Brittany with a mule-train laden with 
 cut fagots. 
 
 That he was prowling about the home-domain 
 of Kerival was itself ominous : but that in this 
 stealthy manner he should be following Annaik 
 was to Alan a matter of genuine alarm. Surely 
 the man could mean no evil against one of the 
 Big House, and one, too, so much admired, and 
 in a certain way loved, as Annaik de Kerival ? 
 And yet the stealthy movements of the peasant, 
 his crouching gait, his patient dogging of her 
 steps — and this, doubtless, ever since she had 
 crossed the glade from the forest to the cypresses 
 — all this had a menacing aspect. 
 
 At that moment the peacocks ceased their wild 
 miaulling. Low and clear, Annaik^s voice came 
 thrillingly along the alley — 
 
88 GREEN FIRE 
 
 ' Alan ! Alan ! Alan, darling, are you there t ' 
 
 His heart beat. Then a flush sprang to his 
 brow, as with sudden anger he heard Jud Ker- 
 bastiou, reply in a thick muffled tone — 
 
 1 Yes, yes, . . . and, and I love you, Annaik ! ' 
 
 Possibly the sleeper heard and understood. 
 Even at that distance Alan saw the light upon 
 her face, the light from within. 
 
 Judik the peasant slowly advanced. His 
 stealthy tread was light as that of a fox. He 
 stopped when he was within a yard of Annaik. 
 
 'Annaik,*' he muttered hoarsely, 'Annaik, it 
 was I who was out among the beeches in front of 
 the chateau while the storm was raging. Sure you 
 must have known it : else why would you come 
 out? I love you, white woman. I am only a 
 peasant . . . but I love you, Annaik de Kerival, 
 I love you — I love you — I love you ! ' 
 
 Surely she was on the verge of waking ! The 
 colour had come back to her white face, her lips 
 moved, as though stirred by a breath from within. 
 Her hands were clasped, and the fingers inter- 
 twisted restlessly. 
 
 Kerbastiou was so wrought that he did not 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 89 
 
 hear steps behind him as Alan moved swiftly 
 forward. 
 
 ' Sure, you will be mine at last,' the man cried 
 hoarsely — 'mine, and none to dispute ... ay, 
 and this very night, too.' 
 
 Slowly Jud put out an arm. His hand almost 
 touched that of Annaik. Suddenly he was 
 seized from behind, and a hand was clasped firmly 
 upon his mouth. He did not see who his 
 unexpected assailant was, but he heard the 
 whisper that was against his ear : 
 
 { If you make a sound I will strangle you to death/ 
 
 With a nod, he showed that he understood. 
 
 1 If I let go, for the moment, will you come 
 back under the trees here where she cannot see 
 or hear us ? 
 
 Another nod. 
 
 Alan relaxed his hold, but did not wholly 
 relinquish his grip. Kerbastiou turned and 
 looked at him. 
 
 ' Oh, it's you] he muttered, as he followed his 
 assailant into the shadow some yards back. 
 
 ' Yes, Judik Kerbastiou ; it is I, Alan de 
 Kerival.' 
 
90 GREEN FIRE 
 
 ' Well, what do you want ? ' 
 
 'What do I want? How dare you be so 
 insolent, fellow ! — you, who have been following 
 a defenceless woman ? ' 
 
 ' What have you been doing ? 1 
 
 'I . . . oh, of course I have been following 
 Mademoiselle Annaik also . . . but that was . . . 
 that was ... to protect her.* 1 
 
 6 And is it not possible I might follow her for 
 the same reason ? 1 
 
 6 It is not the same thing at all, Judik Ker- 
 bastiou, and you know it. In the first place, 
 you have no right to be here at all. In the next, 
 I am Mademoiselle Annaik's cousin, and ' 
 
 ' And I am her lover.' 
 
 Alan stared at the man in sheer amaze. He 
 spoke quietly and assuredly, nor seemed in the 
 least degree perturbed. 
 
 'But . . . but . . . why, Kerbastiou, it is 
 impossible ! • 
 
 ' What is impossible ? ' 
 
 ' That Annaik could love you? 
 
 1 1 did not say she loved me. I said I was her 
 lover." 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 91 
 
 'And you believe that you, a peasant, a 
 man held in ill-repute even among your fellow- 
 peasants, a homeless woodlander, can gain the 
 love of the daughter of your Seigneur, of a woman 
 nurtured as she has been ? ' 
 
 6 You speak like a book, as the saying is, M. 
 de Kerival. 1 Judik uttered the words mockingly, 
 and with raised voice. Annaik, who was still 
 standing as one entranced, heard it: for she 
 whispered again, ' Alan I Alan I Alan!'' 
 
 6 Hush, man, she will hear. Listen, Judik, 
 I don't want to speak harshly. You know me. 
 Every one here does. You must be well aware 
 that I am the last person to despise you or any 
 man because you are poor and unfortunate. But 
 you must see that such a love as this of yours is 
 madness.'' 
 
 ' All love is madness. 1 
 
 6 Oh, yes, of course. But, look you, Judik, what 
 right have you to be here at all, in the home- 
 domain, in the dead of night ! ' 
 
 6 You love Ynys de Kerival. 1 
 
 ' Yes . . . well, yes, I do love her : but what 
 then ? What is that to you ? ' 
 
92 GREEN FIRE 
 
 ' Well, I love Annaik. I am here by the same 
 right as you are.' 
 
 ' You forget. / am welcome. You come by 
 stealth. Do you mean for a moment to say 
 that you are here to meet Mademoiselle Annaik 
 by appointment ? , 
 
 The man was silent. 
 
 ' Judik Kerbastiou ! , 
 
 'Yes?' 
 
 < You are a coward. You followed this 
 woman, whom you say you love, with intent 
 to rob her.' 
 
 6 You are a fool, Alan de Kerival. 1 
 
 Alan raised his arm. Then, ashamed, he let 
 it fall. 
 
 ' Will you go ? Will you go now, at once, or 
 shall I wake Mademoiselle Annaik, and tell her 
 what I have seen — and from what I believe I 
 have saved her ? ' 
 
 6 No, you need not wake her, nor tell her any- 
 thing. I know she has never even given me a 
 thought."' 
 
 Suddenly the man bowed his head. A sob 
 burst through the dark. 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 93 
 
 Alan put his hand on his shoulder. 
 
 < Judik P 
 
 * Judik Kerbastiou ! I am sorry for you from 
 my heart. But go ... go now, at once. 
 Nothing shall be said of this. No one shall 
 know anything. If you wish me to tell my 
 cousin, I will; then she can see you or not, as 
 she may wish.' 
 
 'I go. But . . . yes, tell her. To-morrow. 
 Tell her to-morrow. Only, I would not have 
 hurt her. Tell her that. I go now. Adiou.'' 
 
 With that, Judik Kerbastiou lifted his shaggy 
 head, and turned his great, black, gypsy-wild 
 eyes upon Alan. 
 
 1 She loves you? he said simply. Then he 
 stepped lightly over the path, passed between 
 the cypresses, and moved out across the glade. 
 Alan watched his dark figure slide through the 
 moonlight. He traversed the glade to the 
 right of the thorn. For nearly half a mile 
 he was visible ; then he turned and entered the 
 forest. 
 
 An hour later, two figures moved in absolute 
 
94 GREEN FIRE 
 
 silence, athwart the sand-dunes beyond the 
 cypress-alley. 
 
 Hand in hand they moved. Their faces were 
 in deep shadow, for the moonlight was now 
 obscured by a league-long cloud. 
 
 When they emerged from the scattered pines 
 to the seaward of the chateau, the sentinel 
 peacocks saw them, and began once more their 
 harsh barbaric screams. 
 
 The twain unclasped their hands, and walked 
 steadily forward, speaking no word, not once 
 looking one at the other. 
 
 As they entered the yew-close at the end of 
 the old garden of the chateau, they were as 
 shadows drowned in night. For some minutes, 
 they were invisible, though, from above, the 
 moon shone upon their white faces and on their 
 frozen stillness. The peacocks sullenly ceased. 
 
 Once more they emerged into the moon dusk. 
 As they neared the ivied gables of the west wing 
 of the manor, the cloud drifted from the moon, 
 and her white flood turned the obscurity into a 
 radiance wherein every object stood forth as 
 clear as at noon. 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 95 
 
 Alan's face was white as are the faces of 
 the dead. His eyes did not once lift from the 
 ground. But in Annaik's face was a flush, and 
 her eyes were wild and beautiful as falling stars. 
 
 It was not an hour since she had wakened 
 from her trance: not an hour, and yet already 
 had Alan forgotten — forgotten her, and Ynys, 
 and the storm, and the after-calm. Of one thing 
 he thought only, and that was of what Daniel 
 Dare had once said to him laughingly : ' If the 
 old fables of astrology were true, your horoscope 
 would foretell impossible things.' 
 
 In absolute silence they moved up the long 
 flight of stone stairs that led to the chateau ; in 
 absolute silence they entered by the door which 
 old Matieu had left ajar ; in silence they passed 
 that unconscious sleeper ; in silence they crossed 
 the landing where the corridors diverged. 
 
 Both stopped, simultaneously. Alan seemed 
 about to speak, but his lips closed again without 
 utterance. 
 
 Abruptly he turned. Without a word he 
 passed along the corridor to the right, and dis- 
 appeared in the obscurity 
 
96 GREEN FIRE 
 
 Annaik stood a while, motionless, silent. Then 
 she put her hand to her heart. On her impas- 
 sive face the moonlight revealed nothing : only 
 in her eyes there was a gleam as of one glad 
 unto death. 
 
 Then she too passed, noiseless and swift as a 
 phantom. Outside, on the stone terrace, Ys, the 
 blind peacock, strode to and fro, uttering his 
 prolonged raucous screams. When, at last, he 
 was unanswered by the peacocks in the cypress- 
 alley, his clamant voice no longer tore the silence. 
 
 The moon trailed her flood of light across the 
 earth. It lay upon the waters, and was still a 
 glory there, when, through the chill quietudes of 
 dawn, the stars waned one by one in the soft 
 greying that filtered through the morning dusk. 
 The new day was come. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 VIA OSCURA 
 
 The day that followed this quiet dawn marked 
 the meridian of Spring. Thereafter the flush 
 upon the blossoms would deepen — the yellow pass 
 out of the green — and a deeper green involve the 
 shoreless emerald sea of verdure which everywhere 
 covered the brown earth, and swelled and lapsed 
 in endlessly receding billows of forest and wood- 
 land. Up to that noontide height Spring had 
 aspired, ever since she had shaken the dust of 
 snow from her primrose-sandals : now, looking 
 upon the way she had come, she took the hand of 
 Summer — and both went forth as one, so that 
 none should tell which was still the guest of the 
 greenness. 
 
 This was the day when Alan and Ynys walked 
 among the green alleys of the woods of Kerival, 
 
98 GREEN FIRE 
 
 and when, through the deep gladness that was 
 his, for all the strange gnawing pain in his mind, 
 in his ears echoed the haunting line of Rimbaud : 
 ' Then, in the violet forest, all a-bourgeon, 
 Eucharis said to me : It is Spring."' 
 
 Through the first hours of the day Alan had 
 been unwontedly silent. Ynys had laughed at 
 him with loving eyes, but had not shown any 
 shadow of resentment. His word to the effect 
 that his journey had tired him, and that he had 
 not slept at all, was enough to account for his 
 lack of buoyant joy. 
 
 But, in truth, Ynys did not regret this, since it 
 had brought a still deeper intensity of love into 
 Alan's eyes. When he looked at her, there was 
 so much passion of longing, so pathetic an appeal, 
 that her heart smote her. Why should she be 
 the one chosen to evoke a love such as this, she 
 wondered : she, who was but Ynys, while Alan 
 was a man whom all women might love, and had 
 genius that made him as one set apart from his 
 fellows, and was brow-lit by a starry fate ? 
 
 And yet, in a sense, she understood. They 
 were so much at one, so like in all essential 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 99 
 
 matters, and were in all ways comrades. It 
 would have been impossible for each not to love 
 the other. But, deeper than this, was the pro- 
 found and intimate communion of the spirit. In 
 some beautiful . strange way, she knew, she was 
 the flame to his fire. At 'that flame he lit the 
 torch of which Daniel Dare and others had 
 spoken. She did not see why or wherein it was 
 so, but she believed, and indeed at last realised 
 the exquisite actuality. 
 
 In deep love, there is no height nor depth 
 between two hearts, no height nor depth, no 
 length nor breadth. There is simply love. 
 
 The birds of Angus Ogue are like the wild- 
 doves of the forest : when they nest in the heart 
 they are as one. And her life, and Alan's, were 
 not these one ? 
 
 Nevertheless, Ynys was disappointed as the 
 day went on, and her lover did not seem able to 
 rouse himself from his strange despondency. 
 
 Doubtless this was due largely to what was 
 pending. That afternoon he was to have his 
 long anticipated interview with the Marquise, 
 and would, perhaps, learn what might affect his 
 
100 GREEN FIRE 
 
 whole life. On the other hand, each believed 
 that nothing would be revealed which was not of 
 the past solely. 
 
 Idly, Ynys began to question her companion 
 about the previous night. What had he done, 
 since he had not slept : had he read, or dreamed 
 at the window, or gone out, as had once been his 
 wont on summer nights, to walk in the cypress- 
 alley or along the grassy dunes ? Had he 
 heard a nightingale singing in the moonlight ? 
 Had he noticed the prolonged screaming of the 
 peacocks — unusually prolonged, now that she 
 thought of it, Ynys added. 
 
 8 1 wonder, dear, if you would love me whatever 
 happened — whatever I was, or did ? ' 
 
 It was an inconsequent question. She looked 
 up at him, half perturbed, half pleased. 
 
 ' Yes, Alan.' 
 
 8 But do you mean what you say, knowing that 
 you are not only using a phrase ? * 
 
 * I have no gift of expression, dearest. Words 
 come to me without their bloom and their 
 fragrance, I often think. But . . . Alan, / love 
 you.'' 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 101 
 
 'That is sweetest music for me, Ynys, my 
 fawn. All words from you have both bloom and 
 fragrance, though you may not know it, shy 
 flower. But tell me again, do you mean what 
 you say, absolutely ? ' 
 
 6 Absolutely. In every way, in all things, at 
 all times. Dear, how could anything come 
 between us ? It is possible, of course, that cir- 
 cumstances might separate us : but nothing 
 could really come between us. My heart is 
 yours.'' 
 
 6 What about Andrik de Morvan ? ' 
 
 1 Ah, you are not in earnest, Alan ? ' 
 
 1 Yes ; I am more than half in earnest, Ynys 
 darling. Tell me ! ' 
 
 ' You cannot possibly believe that I care, that 
 I could care, for Andrik as I care for you, Alan.' 
 
 'Why not?' 
 
 ' Why not ? Oh, have you so little belief, 
 then, in women, in me ? Alan, do you not know 
 that what is perhaps possible for a man, though 
 I cannot conceive it, is impossible for a woman ? 
 That is the poorest sophistry which says a 
 woman may love two men at the same time. 
 
102 GREEN FIRE 
 
 That is, if by love is meant what you and I mean. 
 Affection, the deepest affection, is one thing : 
 the love of man and woman, as we mean it, is a 
 thing apart.' 
 
 < You love Andrik ? ' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 6 Could you wed your life with his ? ' 
 
 c I could have done so . . . but for you."' 
 
 6 Then, by your true heart, is there no possibility 
 that he can in any way ever come between us ? , 
 
 'None.' 
 
 'Although he is nominally your betrothed, 
 and believes in you as his future wife ? ' 
 
 'That is not my fault. I drifted into that 
 conditional union, as you know. But after 
 to-day he and every one shall know that I can 
 wed no man but you. But why do you ask me 
 these things, Alan ? ' 
 
 ' I want to know. I will explain later. But 
 tell me, could you be happy with Andrik ? You 
 say you love him ? ' 
 
 * I love him, as a friend, as a comrade.'' 
 
 ' As an intimately dear comrade ? ' 
 
 ' Alan, do not let us misunderstand each other. 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 103 
 
 There can only be one supreme comrade for a 
 woman : and that is the man whom she loves 
 supremely. Every other affection, the closest, 
 the dearest, is as distinct from that as day from 
 night. 1 
 
 'If by some malign chance you and Andrik 
 married — say, in the event of my supposed death 
 — would you still be as absolutely true to me as 
 you are now ? ' 
 
 'What has the accident of marriage to do 
 with truth between a man and a woman, 
 Alan?' 
 
 4 It involves intimacies that would be a dese- 
 cration otherwise. O Ynys, do you not under- 
 stand ? 1 
 
 4 It is a matter of the inner life. Men so rarely 
 believe in the hidden loyalty of the heart. It is 
 possible for a woman to fulfil a bond and yet not 
 be a bondswoman. Outer circumstances have little 
 to do with the inner life, with the real self. 1 
 
 4 In a word, then, if you married Andrik, you 
 would remain absolutely mine, not only if I were 
 dead, but if perchance the rumour were untrue, 
 and I came back, though too late ? ' 
 
104 GREEN FIRE 
 
 « Yes/ 
 
 'Absolutely? 1 
 
 4 Absolutely.' 
 
 6 And you profoundly know, Ynys, that in no 
 conceivable circumstances can Andrik be to you 
 what I am, or anything for a moment approach- 
 ing it ? ' 
 
 ' I do know it.' 
 
 4 Although he were your husband ? ' 
 
 6 Although he were my husband. 1 
 
 The worn lines that were in Alan's face were 
 almost gone. Looking into his eyes, Ynys saw 
 that the strange look of pain which had alarmed 
 her was no longer there. The dear eyes had 
 brightened: a new hope seemed to have arisen 
 in them. 
 
 ' Do you believe me, Alan dear? 1 she whispered. 
 
 ' If I did not, it would kill me, Ynys. 1 
 
 And he spoke truth. The bitter sophistica- 
 tions of love play lightly with the possibilities of 
 death. Men who talk of suicide are likely to be 
 long-livers : lovers whose hearts are easily broken 
 can generally recover and astonish themselves by 
 their heroic endurance. The human heart is 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 105 
 
 like a wave of the sea: it can be lashed into 
 storm, it can be calmed, it can become stagnant 
 — but it is seldom absorbed from the ocean till 
 in natural course the sun takes up its spirit in 
 vapour. Yet, ever and again, there is one wave 
 among a myriad which a spiral wind-eddy may 
 suddenly strike. In a moment it is whirled this 
 way and that : it is involved in a cataclysm of 
 waters : and then cloud and sea meet, and what 
 a moment before had been an ocean-wave is 
 become an idle skiey vapour. 
 
 Alan was of the few men of whom that wave 
 is the symbol. To him death could come at any 
 time, if the wind-eddy of a certain unthinkable 
 sorrow struck him at his heart. 
 
 In this sense, his life was in Ynys"* hands as 
 absolutely as though he were a caged bird. He 
 knew it, and Ynys knew it. 
 
 There are a few men, a few women, like this. 
 Perhaps it is well that these are so rare. Among 
 the hills of the north, at least, they may still be 
 found : in remote mountain-valleys and in lonely 
 isles, where life and death are realised actualities 
 and not the mere adumbrations of the pinions of 
 
106 GREEN FIRE 
 
 that lonely fugitive, the human mind, along the 
 endless precipices of Time. 
 
 Alan knew well that both he and Ynys were 
 not so strong as each believed. Knowing this, 
 he feared for both. And yet, there was but one 
 woman in the world for him — Ynys : as, for her, 
 there was but one man — Alan. 
 
 Without her he could do nothing, achieve 
 nothing. She was his flame, his inspiration, his 
 strength, his light. Without her he was afraid 
 to live : with her, death was a beautiful dream. 
 To her, Alan was not less. She lived in and for 
 him. 
 
 But we are wrought of marsh-fire as well as of 
 stellar light. Now, as of old, the gods do not 
 make of the fairest life a thornless rose. A 
 single thorn may innocently convey poison : so 
 that everywhere men and women go to and fro 
 perilously, and not least those who move through 
 the shadow and shine of an imperious passion. 
 
 For a time, thereafter, Alan and Ynys walked 
 slowly onward, hand in hand, each brooding 
 deep over the thoughts their words had stirred. 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 107 
 
 4 Do you know what Yann says, Alan ? ' Ynys 
 asked, in a low voice, after both had stopped 
 instinctively to listen to a thrush leisurely iterat- 
 ing his just learned love-carol, where he swung 
 on a greening spray of honeysuckle, under a 
 yellow-green lime. 
 
 1 Do you know what Yann says ? ... He says 
 that you have a wave at your feet. What does 
 that mean ? 1 
 
 1 When did he tell you that, Ynys mo-chree ? ' 
 
 1 Ah, Alan, dear, how sweet it is to hear from 
 your lips the dear Gaelic we both love so well. 
 And does that not make you more than ever 
 anxious to learn all that you are to hear this 
 afternoon ? ' 
 
 ' Yes . . . but that, that Ian Macdonald said : 
 what else did he say ? ' 
 
 1 Nothing. He would say no more. I asked 
 him in the Gaelic, and he repeated only, " I see 
 a wave at his feet." ' 
 
 'What Ian means by that I know well. It 
 means I am going on a far journey. 1 
 
 ' Oh, no, Alan, no ! ' 
 
 'He has the sight upon him, at times. Ian 
 
108 GREEN FIRE 
 
 would not say that thing, did he not mean it. 
 Tell me, my fawn, has he ever said anything of 
 this kind about you ? • 
 
 'Yes. Less than a month ago. I was with 
 him one day on the dunes near the sea. Once, 
 when he gave no answer to what I asked, I looked 
 at him, and saw his eyes fixed. " What do you 
 see, Yann ? " I asked. 
 
 1 " I see great rocks, strange caverns. Sure, 
 it is well I am knowing what they are. They 
 are the sea-caves of Rona." 
 
 'There were no rocks visible from where we 
 stood, so I knew that Ian was in one of his 
 visionary moods. I waited, and then spoke 
 again, whisperingly — 
 
 ' " Tell me, Ian Maclain, what do you see ? " 
 
 c " I see two whom I do not know. And they 
 are in a strange place, they are. And on the 
 man I see a shadow, and on the woman I see a 
 light. But what that shadow is I do not know : 
 nor do I know what that light is. But I am for 
 thinking that it is of the Virgin Mary, for I see 
 the dream that is in the woman's heart, and it is 
 a fair wonderful dream that? 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 109 
 
 4 That is all Yann said, Alan. As I was about 
 to speak his face changed. 
 
 ' " What is it, Ian ? " I asked. 
 
 * At first he would answer nothing. Then he 
 said, " It is a dream ; it means nothing. It was 
 only because I was thinking of you and Alan 
 MacAlasdair." 1 
 
 'O Ynys, 1 Alan interrupted, with an eager 
 cry, ' that is a thing I have long striven to know : 
 that which lies in the words " Alan MacAlasdair." 
 My father, then, was named Alasdair ! And 
 was it Rona, you said, was the place of the sea- 
 caves ? Rona . . . that must be an island. The 
 only Rona I know of is that near Skye. It 
 may be the same. Now, indeed, I have a clue, 
 lest I should learn nothing to-day. Did Ian say 
 nothing more ? , 
 
 4 Nothing. I asked him if the man and woman 
 he saw were you and I, but he would not speak. 
 I am certain he was about to say yes, but re- 
 frained.' 
 
 For a while they walked on in silence, each 
 revolving many speculations aroused by the clue 
 given by the words of ' Yann the Dumb. 1 Sud- 
 
110 GREEN FIRE 
 
 denly Ynys tightened her clasp of Alan's 
 hand. 
 
 < What is it, dear? 1 
 
 ' Alan, some time ago you asked me abruptly 
 what I knew about the forester, Judik Kerbastiou. 
 Well, I see him in that beech-covert yonder, 
 looking at us.' 
 
 Alan started. Ynys noticed that for a moment 
 he grew pale as foam. His lips parted, as though 
 he were about to call to the woodlander : when 
 Judik advanced, making at the same time a sign 
 of silence. 
 
 The man had a wild look about him. Clearly 
 he had not slept since he and Alan had parted 
 at midnight. His dusky eyes had a red light in 
 them. His rough clothes were still damp; his 
 face, too, was strangely white and dank. 
 
 Alan presumed that he came to say something 
 concerning Annaik. He did not know what to 
 do to prevent this ; but, while he was pondering, 
 Judik spoke, in a hoarse, tired voice — 
 
 ' Let the Lady Ynys go back to the chateau 
 at once. She is needed there. 1 
 
 ' Why, what is wrong, Judik Kerbastiou ? ' 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 111 
 
 4 Let her go back, I say. No time for words now. 
 Be quick. I am not deceiving you. Listen . . .' 
 and with that he leaned towards Alan, and whis- 
 pered in his ear. 
 
 Alan looked at him in startled amaze. Then, 
 turning towards Ynys, he asked her to go back 
 at once to the chateau. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 4 DEIREADH GACH COGAIDH, SITH ' 
 {'The end of all warfare, Peace ') 
 
 Alan did not wait till Ynys was put of sight, 
 before he demanded the reason of Judik's strange 
 appearance and stranger summons. 
 
 6 Why are you here again, Judik Kerbastiou ? 
 What is the meaning of this haunting of the 
 forbidden home-domain ? And what did you 
 mean by urging Mademoiselle Ynys to go back 
 at once to the chateau ? ' 
 
 6 Time enough later for your other questions, 
 young sir. Meanwhile, come along with me, and 
 as quick as you can.' 
 
 Without another word the woodlander turned 
 and moved rapidly along a narrow path through 
 the brushwood. 
 
 Alan saw it would be useless to ask further 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 113 
 
 questions at the moment ; moreover, he was now 
 vaguely alarmed. What could all this mystery 
 mean ? Could an accident have happened to the 
 Marquis Tristran ? It was hardly likely, for he 
 seldom ventured into the forest, unless when the 
 weather had dried all the ways : for he had to 
 be wheeled in his chair, and, as Alan knew, 
 disliked to leave the gardens or the well-kept 
 yew and cypress-alleys near the chateau. 
 
 In a brief while, however, he heard voices. 
 Judik turned, and waved to him to be wary. 
 The forester bent forward, stared intently, and 
 then beckoned to Alan to creep up alongside. 
 
 < Who is it ? What is it, Judik ? ' 
 
 < Look; 
 
 Alan disparted a bough of underwood which 
 made an effectual screen. In the glade beyond 
 were four figures. 
 
 One of these he recognised at once. It was 
 the Marquis de Kerival. He was, as usual 
 seated in his wheeled chair. Behind him, some 
 paces to the right, was Raif Kermorvan, the 
 steward of Kerival. The other two men Alan 
 had not seen before. 
 
114 GREEN FIRE 
 
 One of these strangers was a tall, handsome 
 man, of about sixty. His close-cropped white 
 hair, his dress, his whole mien, betrayed the 
 military man. Evidently a colonel, Alan thought, 
 or perhaps a general : at any rate an officer of 
 high rank, and one to whom command and self- 
 possession were alike habitual. 
 
 Behind this gentleman, one of the most dis- 
 tinguished and even noble-looking men he had 
 ever seen, and again some paces to the right, 
 was a man, evidently a groom, and to all ap- 
 pearances an orderly in mufti. 
 
 The first glance revealed that a duel was 
 imminent. The duellists, of course, were the 
 military stranger and the Marquis de Kerival. 
 
 ' Who is that man ? ' Alan whispered to 
 Kerbastiou. ' Do you know ? ' 
 
 4 1 do not know his name. He is a soldier — 
 a general. He came to Kerival to-day : an hour 
 or more ago. I guided him through the wood, 
 for he and his man had ridden into one of the 
 winding alleys and had lost their way. I heard 
 him ask for the Marquis de Kerival. I waited 
 about in the shrubbery of the rose-garden to see 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 115 
 
 if . . . if . . . some one for whom I waited . . . 
 would come out. After a time, half an hour or 
 less, this gentleman came forth, ushered by Raif 
 Kermorvan the steward. His man brought 
 around the two horses again. They mounted, 
 and rode slowly away. I joined them, and offered 
 to show them a shorter route than that which 
 they were taking. The general said they wished 
 to find a glade known as Merlin's Rest. Then 
 I knew what he came for, I knew what was 
 going to happen.' 
 
 4 What, Judik?' 
 
 1 Hush, not so loud ! They will hear us ! I 
 knew it was for a duel. It was here that Ajidrik 
 de Morvan, the uncle of him whom you know, 
 was killed by a man — I forget his name.' 
 
 ' Why did the man kill Andrik de Morvan ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, who knows ? Why does one kill, anybody ? 
 Because he was tired of enduring the Sieur 
 Andrik longer : he bored him beyond words to 
 tell, I have heard. Then, too, the Count, for 
 he was a Count, loved Andrik's wife.' 
 
 Alan glanced at Judik. For all his rough wild- 
 ness, he spoke on occasion like a man of breed- 
 
116 GREEN FIRE 
 
 ing. Moreover, at no time was he subservient 
 in his manner. Possibly, Alan thought, it was 
 true what he had heard : that Judik Kerbastiou 
 was by moral right Judik de Kerival. 
 
 While the onlookers were whispering, the four 
 men in the glade had all slightly shifted their 
 position. The Marquis, it was clear, had insisted 
 upon this. The light had been in his eyes. Now 
 the antagonists and their seconds were arranged 
 aright. Kermorvan, the steward, was speaking 
 slowly : directions as to the moment when to fire. 
 
 Alan knew it would be worse than useless to 
 interfere. He could but hope that this was no 
 more than an affair of honour of a kind not 
 meant to have a fatal issue ; a political quarrel, 
 perhaps : a matter of insignificant social offence. 
 
 Before Raif Kermorvan — a short, black-haired, 
 bull-necked man, with a pale face and protrud- 
 ing light-blue eyes — had finished what he had 
 to say, Alan noticed what had hitherto escaped 
 him : that immediately beyond the glade, and 
 under a huge sycamore already in full leaf, stood 
 the Kerival carriage. Alain the coachman sat 
 on the box, and held the two black horses in 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 117 
 
 rein. Standing by the side of the carriage was 
 Georges de Rohan, the doctor of Kerloek, and a 
 personal friend of the Marquis Tristran. 
 
 Suddenly Kermorvan raised his voice. 
 
 ' M. le General, are you ready ? ' 
 
 ' I am ready,' answered a low, clear voice. 
 
 ' M. le Marquis, are you ready ? ' 
 
 Tristran de Kerival did not answer, but as- 
 sented by a slight nod. 
 
 4 Then raise your weapons, and fire the moment 
 I say " thrice." » 
 
 Both men raised their pistols. 
 
 ' You have the advantage of me, sir, 1 said the 
 Marquis coldly, in a voice as audible to Alan 
 and Judik as to the others. g I present a good 
 aim to you here. Nevertheless, I warn you once 
 more that you will not escape me . . . this 
 time. 1 
 
 The general smiled, scornfully Alan thought. 
 Again, when suddenly he lowered his pistol and 
 spoke, Alan fancied he detected if not a foreign 
 accent, at least a foreign intonation. 
 
 ' Once more, Tristran de Kerival, I tell you 
 that this duel is a crime ; a crime against me ; 
 
118 GREEN FIRE 
 
 a crime against Madame la Marquise; a crime 
 against your daughters ; and a crime against ' 
 
 'That will do, General. I am ready. Are 
 you?' 
 
 Without further word the stranger slowly 
 drew himself together. He raised his arm, while 
 his opponent did the same. 
 
 6 Once f 
 
 ' Twice ! ' 
 
 'Thrice!" 
 
 There was a crack like that of a cattle-whip. 
 Simultaneously some splinters of wood were blown 
 from the left side of the wheeled-chair. 
 
 The Marquis Tristran smiled. He had reserved 
 his fire. He could aim now with fatal effect. 
 
 6 It is murder,' muttered Alan, horrified : but 
 at that moment the Marquis spoke. Alan leaned 
 forward intent to hear. 
 
 'At last? That was all. But in the words 
 was a concentrated longing for revenge, the utter- 
 ance of a vivid hate. 
 
 Tristran de Kerival slowly and with methodical 
 malignity took aim. There was a flash, the 
 same whip-like crack. 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 119 
 
 For a moment it seemed as though the ball 
 had missed its mark. Then suddenly there was 
 a bubbling of red froth at the mouth of the 
 stranger. Still, he stood erect. 
 
 Alan looked at the Marquis de Kerival. He 
 was leaning back, deathly white, but with the 
 bitter suppressed smile which every one at the 
 chateau knew and hated. 
 
 All at once, the general swayed, lunged for- 
 ward, and fell prone. 
 
 Dr. de Rohan ran out from the sycamore, and 
 knelt beside him. After a few seconds he looked 
 up. 
 
 He did not speak, but every one knew what 
 his eyes said. To make it unmistakable, he 
 drew out his handkerchief and put it over the 
 face of the dead man. 
 
 Alan was about to advance when Judik Ker- 
 bastiou plucked him by the sleeve. 
 
 ' Hist ! M'sieur Alan ! There is Mamzell 
 Ynys returning ! She will be here in another 
 minute. She must not see what is there. 1 
 
 1 You are right, Judik. I thank you." 
 
 With that, he turned and moved swiftly down 
 
120 GREEN FIRE 
 
 the leaf-hid path which would enable him to 
 intercept Ynys. 
 
 4 What is it, Alan ? ' she asked, with wondering 
 eyes, the moment he was at her side. 4 What is 
 it ? Why are you so pale ? , 
 
 ' It is because of a duel that has been fought 
 here. You must go back at once, dear. There 
 are reasons why you , 
 
 6 Is my father one of the combatants ? I know 
 he is out of the chateau. Tell me, quick ! Is 
 he wounded ? Is he dead ? ' 
 
 4 No, no, darling heart. He is unhurt. But I 
 can tell you nothing more just now. Later . . . 
 later. But why did you return here ? ' 
 
 4 1 came with a message from my mother. 
 She is in sore trouble, I fear. I found her, on 
 her couch in the Blue Salon, with tears streaming 
 down her face, and sobs choking her. 1 
 
 ' And she wants me . . . now ? ' 
 
 1 Yes. She told me to look for you, and bring 
 you to her at once.' 
 
 4 Then go straightway back, dear, and tell her 
 that I shall be with her immediately. Yes, go — 
 go — at once.'' 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 121 
 
 But by the time Ynys had moved into the 
 alley which led her to the chateau, and Alan 
 had returned to the spot where he had left 
 Judik, rapid changes had occurred. 
 
 The wheeled-chair had gone. Alan could see 
 it nearing the South Yews : with the Marquis 
 Tristran in it, leaning backward and with head 
 erect. At its side walked Raif Kermorvan. He 
 seemed to be whispering to the Seigneur. The 
 carriage had disappeared : with it Georges de 
 Rohan, the soldier-orderly, and, presumably, the 
 dead man. 
 
 Alan stood hesitant, uncertain whether to go 
 first to the Marquise, or to follow the man whom 
 he regarded now with an aversion infinitely 
 deeper than he had ever done hitherto ; with 
 whom, he felt, he never wished to speak again, 
 for he was a murderer, if ever man was, and, from 
 Alan's standpoint, a coward as well. Tristran de 
 Kerival was the deadliest shot in all the country- 
 side, and he must have known that when he 
 challenged his victim he gave him his death- 
 sentence. 
 
 It did not occur to Alan that possibly the 
 
122 GREEN FIRE 
 
 survivor was the man challenged. Instinctively 
 he knew that this was not so. 
 
 Judik suddenly touched his arm. 
 
 ' Here, 1 he said, ' this is the name of the dead 
 man. I got the servant to write it down for 
 me.' 
 
 Alan took the slip of paper. On it was, 
 M. le General Carmichael. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE UNFOLDING OF THE SCROLL 
 
 When Alan reached the chateau he was at once 
 accosted by old Matieu. 
 
 'Madame la Marquise wishes to see you in 
 her private room, M'sieu Alan, and without a 
 moment's delay. 1 
 
 In a few seconds he was on the upper landing. 
 At the door of the room known as the Blue 
 Salon he met Yann the Dumb. 
 
 6 What is it, Ian ? Is there anything wrong ? ' 
 
 In his haste he spoke in French. The old 
 islander looked at him, but did not answer. 
 
 Alan repeated his question in Gaelic. 
 
 1 Yes, Alan MacAlasdair, I fear there is gloom 
 and darkness upon us aH.'* 
 
 'Why?' 
 
 6 By this an' by that. But I have seen the 
 
124 GREEN FIRE 
 
 death-cloth about Lois nic Alasdair bronnach 
 for weeks past. I saw it about her feet, and 
 then about her knees, and then about her breast. 
 Last night, when I looked at her, I saw it at her 
 neck. And to-day, the shadow-shroud is risen 
 to her eyes.' 
 
 ' But your second-sight is not always true, you 
 know, Ian. Why, you told me when I was here 
 last that I would soon be seeing my long-dead 
 father again, and, more than that, that I should 
 see him but he never see me. But of this and 
 your other dark sayings, no more now. Can I 
 go in at once and see my aunt ? , 
 
 ' I will be asking that, Alan-mo-caraid. But 
 what you say is not true. I have never yet " seen " 
 anything that has not come to pass : though 
 I have had the sight but seldom, to Himself 
 be the praise.' With that Ian entered, exchanged 
 a word or two, and ushered Alan into the room. 
 
 On a couch beside a great fireplace, across the 
 iron brazier of which were flaming pine-logs, an 
 elderly woman lay almost supine. That she had 
 been a woman of great beauty was unmistakable, 
 for all her grey hair and the ravages that time 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 125 
 
 and suffering had wrought upon her face. Even 
 now her face was beautiful : mainly from the 
 expression of the passionate dusky eyes which 
 were so like those of Annaik. Her long inert 
 body was covered with a fantastic Italian silk- 
 cloth, whose gay pattern emphasised her own 
 helpless condition. Alan had not seen her for 
 some months, and he was shocked at the change. 
 Below the eyes, as flamelike as ever, were pur- 
 plish shadows, and everywhere through the 
 habitual ivory of the delicate features a grey 
 ashiness had diffused. When she held out her 
 hand to him, he saw it as transparent as a fan, 
 and perceived within it the red gleam of the 
 fire. 
 
 1 Ah, Alan, it is you at last ! How glad I am 
 to see you ! 1 The voice was one of singular sweet- 
 ness, in tone and accent much like that of Ynys. 
 
 6 Dear Aunt Lois, not more glad than I am to 
 see you,' — and, as he spoke, Alan kneeled at the 
 couch and kissed the frail hand that had been 
 held out to him. 
 
 6 1 would have so eagerly seen you at once on 
 my arrival,'' he resumed, ' but I was given your 
 
126 GREEN FIRE 
 
 message: that you had one of your seasons of 
 suffering, and could not see me. You have been 
 in pain, Aunt Lois ? ' 
 
 6 Yes, dear, I am dying.' 
 
 ' Dying ! Oh, no, no, no. You don't mean 
 that And besides ' 
 
 ' Why should I not mean it ? Why should I 
 fear it, Alan ? Has life meant so much to me of 
 late years that I should wish to prolong it ? ' 
 
 ' But you have endured so long ! ' 
 
 ' A bitter reason, truly ! . . . and one too apt 
 to a woman ! Well, enough of this. Alan, I 
 want to speak to you about yourself. But first 
 tell me one thing. Do you love any woman ? ' 
 
 'Yes, with all my heart, with all my life, I 
 love a woman.' 
 
 1 Have you told her so ? Has she betrothed 
 herself to you ? ' 
 
 ' Yes.' 
 
 4 Is it Annaik ? ' 
 
 c Annaik . . . Annaik ! ' 
 
 1 Why are you so surprised, Alan ? Annaik is 
 beautiful : she has long loved you, I am certain : 
 and you, too, if I mistake not, care for her ? ' 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 127 
 
 I Of course I do : of course I care for her, 
 Aunt Lois, I love her. But I do not love her as 
 you mean.' 
 
 The Marquise looked at him steadily. 
 
 I I do not quite understand, 1 she said gravely. 
 ' I must speak to you about Annaik, later. But 
 now, will you tell me who the woman is ? ' 
 
 < Yes. It is Ynys. 1 
 
 6 Ynys ! But, Alan, do you not know that she 
 is betrothed to Andrik de Morvan ? ' 
 
 ' I know.' 
 
 1 And that such a betrothal is, in Brittany, 
 almost as binding as a marriage ? ' 
 
 • I have heard that said. 1 
 
 ' And that the Marquis de Kerival wishes the 
 union to take place ? ' 
 
 ' The Marquis Tristran's opinion on any matter 
 does not in any way concern me. 1 
 
 { That may be, Alan. But it concerns Ynys. 
 Do you know that I also wish her to marry 
 Andrik: that his parents wish it; and that 
 every one regards the union as all but an ac- 
 complished fact ? ' 
 
 1 Yes, dear Aunt Lois, I have known or pre- 
 
128 GREEN FIRE 
 
 sumed all you tell me. But nothing of it can 
 alter what is a vital part of my existence/ 
 
 t Do you know that Ynys herself gave her 
 pledge to Andrik de Morvan ? ' 
 
 1 It was a conditional pledge. But in any case 
 she will formally renounce it.' 
 
 For a time there was silence. 
 
 Alan had risen, and now stood by the side of 
 the couch with folded arms. The Marquise Lois 
 looked up at him with her steadfast shadowy eyes. 
 When she spoke again she averted them, and her 
 voice was so low as almost to be a whisper. 
 
 ' Finally, Alan, let me ask you one question. 
 It is not about you and Ynys. I infer that both 
 of you are at one in your determination to take 
 everything into your own hands. Presumably 
 you can maintain her and yourself. Tristran — 
 the Marquis de Kerival — will not contribute a 
 franc towards her support. If he knew, he would 
 turn her out of doors this very day.' 
 
 ' Well, Aunt Lois, I wait for your final ques- 
 tion V- 
 
 < It is this. What about Annaik f ' 
 
 Startled by her tone and sudden lifted glance, 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 129 
 
 Alan stared in silence : then recollecting himself, 
 he repeated dully — 
 
 ' What about Annaik ? . . . Annaik, Aunt 
 Lois, why do you ask me about Annaik? 1 
 
   She loves you.' 
 
 I As a brother ; as the betrothed of Ynys ; as 
 a dear comrade and friend/ 
 
 4 Do not be a hypocrite, Alan. You know 
 that she loves you. What of your feeling 
 towards her ? ' 
 
 I I love her ... as a brother loves a sister 
 ... as any old playmate and friend ... as 
 ... as the sister of Ynys/ 
 
 A faint scornful smile came upon the white 
 lips of the Marquise. 
 
 'Will you be good enough, then, to explain 
 about last night. ' 
 
 1 About last night ? ' 
 
 1 Come, be done with evasion. Yes, about last 
 night. Alan, I know that you and Annaik were 
 out together in the cypress-avenue, and again on 
 the dunes, after midnight ; that you were seen 
 walking hand in hand ; and that, stealthily, you 
 entered the house together.' 
 
130 GREEN FIRE 
 
 'Well? 1 
 
 * Well ! The inference is obvious. But I will 
 let you see that I know more. Annaik went out 
 of the house late. Old Matieu let her out. 
 Shortly after that you went out of the chateau. 
 Later, you and she came upon Judik Kerbastiou 
 prowling about in the woods. It was more than 
 an hour after he left you that you returned to 
 the chateau. Where were you during that hour 
 or more ? ' 
 
 Alan flushed. He unfolded his arms, hesitated, 
 then refolded them. 
 
 6 How do you know this ? ' he asked simply. 
 
 ; I know it, because , 
 
 But before she finished what she was about to 
 say, the door opened and Yann entered. 
 
 < What is it, Ian?' 
 
 ' I would be speaking to you alone for a minute, 
 Bantighearna.'' 
 
 ' Alan, go to the alcove yonder, please. I 
 must hear in private what Yann has to say to 
 me. 1 
 
 As soon as the young man was out of hearing, 
 Yann stooped and spoke in low tones. The 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 131 
 
 Marquise Lois grew whiter and whiter till not 
 a vestige of colour remained in her face, and the 
 only sign of life was in the eyes. Suddenly she 
 made an exclamation. 
 
 Alan turned and looked at her. He caught 
 her agonised whisper :   O my God! ' 
 
 1 What is it, oh, what is it, dear Aunt Lois ? ' 
 he cried, as he advanced to her side. 
 
 He expected to be waved back, but to his 
 surprise the Marquise made no sign to him to 
 withdraw. Instead, she whispered some instruc- 
 tions to Yann and then bade him go. 
 
 When they were alone once more, she took 
 a small silver flagon from beneath her cover- 
 let and poured a few drops upon some sugar. 
 Having taken this she seemed to breathe more 
 easily. It was evident, at the same time, that 
 she had received some terrible shock. 
 
 • Alan, come closer. I cannot speak loud. I 
 have no time to say more to you about Annaik. 
 I must leave that to you and to her. But lest I 
 die, let me say at once that I forbid you to 
 marry Ynys, and that I enjoin you to marry 
 Annaik, and that without delay. 1 
 
132 GREEN FIRE 
 
 A spasm of pain crossed the speaker's face. 
 She stopped and gasped for breath. When 
 at last she resumed, it was clear she con- 
 sidered as settled the matter on which she had 
 spoken. 
 
 ' Alan, I am so unwell that I must be very 
 brief. And now listen. You are twenty-five 
 to-day. Such small fortune as is yours comes 
 now into your possession. It has been adminis- 
 tered for you by a firm of lawyers in Edinburgh. 
 See, here is the address. Can you read it? 
 Yes ? . . . well, keep the slip. This fortune is 
 not much ; to many, possibly to you, it may not 
 seem enough to provide more than the bare 
 necessities of life, not enough for its needs. 
 Nevertheless, it is your own, and you will be 
 glad. It will, at least, suffice to keep you free 
 from need if ever you fulfil your great wish to go 
 back to the land of your fathers, to your own 
 place.' 
 
 ' That is still my wish and my hope. 1 
 
 ' So be it. You will have also an old sea- 
 castle, not much more than a keep, on a 
 remote island. It will at any rate be your own. 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 133 
 
 It is on an island where few people are, a wild 
 and precipitous isle far out in the Atlantic at 
 the extreme of the Southern Hebrides.' 
 
 ' Is it called Rona ? ' Alan interrupted eagerly. 
 
 Without noticing or heeding his eagerness, she 
 assented. 
 
 1 Yes, it is called Rona. Near it are the isles 
 of Mingulay and Borosay. These three islands 
 were once populous, and it was there that for 
 hundreds of years your father's clan, of which 
 he was hereditary chief, lived and prospered 
 After the evil days, the days when the young 
 king was hunted in the west as though a royal 
 head were the world's desire, and when our brave 
 kinswoman, Flora Macdonald, proved that women 
 as well as men could dare all for a good cause — 
 after those evil days the people melted away. 
 Soon the last remaining handful were upon 
 Borosay ; and there, too, till the great fire that 
 swept the island a score of years ago, stood 
 the castle of my ancestors, the Macdonalds of 
 Borosay. 
 
   My father was a man well known in his day. 
 The name of Sir Kenneth Macdonald was as 
 
134 GREEN FIRE 
 
 familiar in London as in Edinburgh, and in Paris 
 he was known to all the military and diplomatic 
 world, for in his youth he had served in the 
 French army with distinction, and held the 
 honorary rank of general. 
 
 6 Not long before my mother's death he came 
 back to our lonely home in Borosay, bringing 
 with him a kinsman of another surname, who 
 owned the old castle of Rona on the Isle of the 
 Sea-Caves, as Rona is often called by the people 
 of the Hebrides. Also there came with him a 
 young French officer of high rank. After a time 
 I was asked to marry this man. I did not love 
 him, did not even care for him, and I refused. In 
 truth . . . already, though unknowingly, I loved 
 your father, he that was our kinsman and owned 
 Rona and its old castle. But Alasdair did not 
 speak; and because of that we each came to 
 sorrow. 
 
 ' My father told me he was ruined. If I did 
 not marry Tristran de Kerival, he would lose all. 
 Moreover, my dying mother begged me to save 
 the man she had loved so well and truly, though 
 he had left her so much alone. 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 135 
 
 6 Well, to be brief, I agreed. My kinsman 
 Alasdair was away at the time. He returned on 
 the eve of the very day on which I was suddenly 
 married by Father Somerled Macdonald. We 
 were to remain a few weeks in Borosay because 
 of my mothers health. 
 
 1 When Alasdair learned what had happened, he 
 was furious. I believe he even drew a riding- 
 whip across the face of Tristran de Kerival. 
 Fierce words passed between them, and a cruel 
 taunt that rankled. Nor would Alasdair have 
 any word with me at all. He sent me a bitter 
 message, but the bitterest word he could send 
 was that which came to me : that he and my 
 sister Silis had gone away together. 
 
 4 From that day, I never saw Silis again, till 
 the time of her death. Soon afterwards our 
 mother died, and while the island-funeral was 
 being arranged, our father had a stroke, and 
 himself died, in time to be buried along with 
 his wife. It was only then that I realised how 
 more than true had been his statements as to 
 his ruin. He died penniless. I was reminded of 
 this unpleasant fact at the time, by the Marquis 
 
136 GREEN FIRE 
 
 de Kerival ; and I have had ample opportunity 
 since for bearing it in vivid remembrance. 
 
 8 As soon as possible we settled all that could 
 be settled, and left for Brittany. I have some- 
 times thought my husband's love was killed when 
 he discovered that Alasdair had loved me. He 
 forbade me even to mention his name, unless he 
 introduced it : and he was wont to swear that a 
 day would come when he would repay in full 
 what he believed to be the damning insult he 
 had received. 
 
 ' We took with us only one person from Borosay, 
 an islander of Bona. He is, in fact, a clansman 
 both of you and me. It is of Ian I speak, of 
 course, him that soon came to be called here 
 Yann the Dumb. My husband and I had at 
 least this to unite us : that we were both Celtic, 
 and had all our racial sympathies in common. 
 
 4 1 heard from Silis that she was married, and 
 was happy. I am afraid this did not add to 
 my happiness. She wrote to me, too, when she 
 was about to bear her child. Strangely enough, 
 Alasdair, who, like his father before him, was an 
 officer in the French army, was then stationed 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 137 
 
 not far from Kerival, though my husband knew 
 nothing of this at first. My own boy and Silis's 
 were born about the same time. My child died : 
 that of Silis and Alasdair lived. You are that 
 child. No . . . wait, Alan ... I will tell you 
 his name shortly. . . . You, I say, are that child. 
 Soon afterwards, Silis had a dangerous relapse. 
 In her delirium she said some wild things : among 
 them, words to the effect that the child which 
 had died was hers, and that the survivor was 
 mine — that, somehow or other, they had been 
 changed. Then, too, she cried out in her way- 
 wardness — and, poor girl, she must have known 
 then that Alasdair had loved me before he loved 
 her — that the child who lived, he who had been 
 christened Alan, was the child of Alasdair and 
 myself. 
 
 ' All this poor delirium at the gate of death 
 meant nothing. But in some way it came to 
 Tristan's ears, and he believed. After Silis's 
 death I had brought you home, Alan, and had 
 announced that I would adopt you. I promised 
 Silis this, in her last hour, when she was in 
 her right mind again : also that the child, you, 
 
138 GREEN FIRE 
 
 should be brought up to speak and think in our 
 own ancient language, and that in all ways you 
 should grow up a true Gael. I have done my 
 best, Alan ? ' 
 
 'Indeed, indeed you have. I shall never, 
 never forget that you have been my mother 
 to me.' 
 
 'Well, my husband never forgave that. He 
 acquiesced, but he never forgave. For long, and 
 I fear to this day, he persists in his belief that 
 you are really my illegitimate child, and that 
 Silis was right in thinking that I had succeeded 
 in having my own new-born babe transferred to 
 her arms, while her dead offspring was brought 
 to me, and, as my own, interred. It has created 
 a bitter feud, and that is why he hates the sight 
 of you. That, too, Alan, is why he would never 
 consent to your marriage with either Ynys or 
 Annaik."" 
 
 'But you yourself urged me a little ago 
 to . . . to . . . marry Annaik.' 
 
 ' I had a special reason. Besides, I of course 
 know the truth. In his heart, God knows, my 
 husband cannot doubt it.' 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 139 
 
 4 Then tell me this : is my father dead also, as 
 1 have long surmised ? ' 
 
 6 No . . . yes, yes, Alan, he is dead. 1 
 
 Alan noticed his aunt's confusion, and re- 
 garded her steadily. 
 
 1 Why do you first say " no " and then " yes." ' 
 
 * Because , 
 
 But here again an interruption occurred. The 
 portiere moved back, and then the wide doors 
 disparted. Into the Salon was wheeled a chair, in 
 which sat the Marquis de Kerival. Behind him 
 was his attendant: at his side, Kermorvan the 
 steward. The face of the Seigneur was still deathly 
 pale, and the features were curiously drawn. 
 The silky hair, too, seemed whiter than ever, 
 and white as foam-drift on a dark wave were 
 the long thin hands which lay on the lap of the 
 black velvet shooting-jacket he wore. 
 
 1 Ah, Lois, is this a prepared scene ? ' he 
 exclaimed, in a cold and sneering voice, g or has 
 the young man known all along ? , 
 
 'Tristran, I have not yet told him what I 
 now know. Be merciful."' 
 
 'Alan MacAlasdair, as the Marquise here 
 
140 GREEN FIRE 
 
 calls you — and she ought to know — have you 
 learned yet the name and rank of your father ? ' 
 
 ' No; 
 
 'Tell him, Lois. 1 
 
 'Tristran, listen. All is over now. Soon I 
 too shall be gone. In the name of God I pray 
 you to relent from this long cruelty, this remorse- 
 less infamy. You know as well as I do that our 
 first-born is dead twenty-five years ago, and that 
 this man here is truly the son of Silis, my sister. 
 And here is one overwhelming proof for you : I 
 have just been urging him to marry Annaik. 1 
 
 At that Tristran the Silent was no longer 
 silent. With a fierce laugh he turned to the 
 steward — 
 
 4 1 call you to witness, Raif Kermorvan, that 
 I would kill Annaik, or Ynys either for that 
 matter, before I would allow such an unnatural 
 union. Once and for all I absolutely ban it. 
 Besides . . . Listen, you there with your fathers 
 eyes! You are sufficiently a Gael to feel that 
 you would not marry the daughter of a man who 
 killed your father ? ' 
 
 ' God forbid!' 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 141 
 
 4 Well, then, God does forbid. Lois, tell this 
 man what you know.' 
 
 ' Alan,' began the Marquise quaveringly, her 
 voice fluttering like a dying bird, 'the name 
 of your father is . . . is . . . Alasdair . . . 
 Alasdair Carmichael ! ' 
 
 6 Carmichael ! ^ 
 
 For a moment he was dazed, bewildered. 
 When, recently, had he heard that name ? 
 
 Then it flashed upon him. He turned with 
 flaming eyes to where the Marquis sat, quietly 
 watching him. 
 
 1 O my God ! ' That was all. He could say 
 no more. His heart was in his throat. 
 
 Then, hoarse and trembling, he put out his 
 hands. 
 
 % Tell me it is not true ! Tell me it is not 
 true!' 
 
 1 What is not true, Alan Carmichael ? ' 
 
 c That that was he who died in the wood 
 yonder.' 
 
 ' That was General Alasdair Carmichael.' 
 
 'My father?' 
 
 1 Your father.' 
 
142 GREEN FIRE 
 
 ' But, you devil, you murdered him ! I saw 
 you do it ! You knew it was he — and you killed 
 him. You knew he would not try to kill you, 
 and you waited : then, when he had fired, you 
 took careful aim and killed him ! ' 
 
 'You reiterate, my friend. These are facts 
 with which I am familiar.' 
 
 The cool, sneering tone stung Allan to mad- 
 ness. He advanced, menacingly. 
 
 6 Murderer, you shall not escape ! ' 
 
 ' A fitting sentiment, truly, from a man who 
 wants to marry my daughter ! ' 
 
 ' Marry your daughter ! Marry the daughter 
 of my father's murderer ! I would sooner never 
 see the face of woman again than do this thing/ 
 
 ' Good. I am well content. And now, young 
 man, you are of age : you have come into your 
 patrimony, including your ruined keep on the 
 island of Rona ; and I will trouble you to go — 
 to leave Kerival for good and all.' 
 
 Suddenly, without a word, Alan moved 
 rapidly forward. With a light touch he laid 
 his hand for a moment on the brow of the 
 motionless man in the wheeled -chair. 
 
THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE 143 
 
 ' There, I lay upon you, Tristran de Kerival, 
 the curse of the newly dead and of the living ! 
 May the evil that you have done corrode your 
 brain, and may your life silt away as sand, and 
 may your soul know the second death.'' 
 
 As he turned to leave the room he saw Ker- 
 bastiou standing in the doorway. 
 
 'Who are you to be standing there, Judik 
 Kerbastiou ? ' demanded the steward angrily. 
 
 6 1 am Rohan de Kerival. Ask this man here 
 if I am not his son. Three days ago, the 
 woman who was my mother died. She died a 
 vagrant in the forest. But, nigh upon thirty 
 years ago, she was legally married to the young 
 Marquis Tristran de Kerival. I am their child. 1 
 
 Alan glanced at the man he had cursed. A 
 strange look had come into his ashy face. 
 
 1 Her name ? , was all Tristran the Silent said. 
 
 ' Annora Brizeux. 1 
 
 1 You have proofs ? ' 
 
 i I have all the proofs. , 
 
 'You are only a peasant, I disown you. I 
 know nothing of you or of the wanton that was 
 your mother, , 
 
144 GREEN FIRE 
 
 Without a word Judik strode forward and 
 struck him full in the face. At that moment 
 the miraculous happened. The Marquise, who 
 had not stood erect for years, rose to her full 
 height. 
 
 She, too, crossed the room. 
 
 * Alan, 1 she cried, ' see : he has killed me as 
 well as your father,'' and with that she swayed, 
 and fell dead, at the feet of the man who had 
 trampled her soul in the dust and made of her 
 blossoming life a drear and sterile wilderness. 
 
BOOK SECOND 
 THE HERDSMAN 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 RETROSPECTIVE : FROM THE HEBRID ISLES 
 
 At the end of the third month after that dis- 
 astrous day when Alan Carmichael knew that 
 his father had been slain, and before his unknow- 
 ing eyes, by Tristran de Kerival, a great terror 
 came upon him. 
 
 On that day itself he had left the Manor of 
 Kerival. With all that blood between him and 
 his enemy he could not stay a moment longer in 
 the house. To have done so would have been to 
 show himself callous indeed to the memory of his 
 father. 
 
 Nor could he see Ynys. He could not look 
 at her, innocent as she was. She was her father's 
 child, and her father had murdered his father. 
 Surely a union would be against nature: he 
 must fly while he had the strength. 
 
148 GREEN FIRE 
 
 When, however, he had gained the yew-close 
 he turned, hesitated, and then slowly walked 
 northward to where the long brown dunes lay 
 in a golden glow overagainst the pale blue of 
 the sea. There, bewildered, wrought almost to 
 madness, he moved to and fro, unable to realise 
 all that had happened, and with bitter words 
 cursing the malign fate which had overtaken 
 him. 
 
 The afternoon waned, and he was still there, 
 uncertain as ever, still confused, baffled, mentally 
 blind. 
 
 Then suddenly he saw the figure of Yann the 
 Dumb, his friend and clansman, Ian Macdonald. 
 The old man had understood at once that, after 
 what had happened, Alan Carmichael would 
 never go back to Kerival. 
 
 6 Why do you come to see me here, Ian ? ' 
 Alan had asked wearily. 
 
 When Ian began ' Thiginn gu cFchoimhead 
 ... I would come to see you, though your 
 home were a rock-cave, 1 the familiar sound of 
 the Gaelic did more than anything else to clear 
 his mind of the shadows which overlay it. 
 
THE HERDSMAN 149 
 
 'Yes, Alan MacAlasdair,' Ian answered, in 
 response to an eager question, ' whatever I know 
 is yours now, since Lois nic Choinneach is dead, 
 poor lady: though, sure, it is the best thing 
 she could be having now, that death.' 
 
 As swiftly as possible Alan elicited all he 
 could from the old man : all that there had 
 not been time to hear from the Marquise. He 
 learned what a distinguished soldier, what a 
 fine man, what a true Gael, Alasdair Carmichael 
 had been. When his wife had died he had 
 been involved in some disastrous lawsuit, and 
 his deep sorrow and absolute financial ruin came 
 to him at one and the same moment. It was 
 at this juncture, though there were other good 
 reasons also, that Lois de Kerival had under- 
 taken to adopt and bring up Silis's child. When 
 her husband Tristran had given his consent, it 
 was with the stipulation that Lois and Alasdair 
 Carmichael should never meet, and that the 
 child was not to learn his surname till he came 
 into the small fortune due to him through his 
 mother. 
 
 This and much else Alan learned from Ian. Out 
 
150 GREEN FIRE 
 
 of all the pain grew a feeling of bitter hatred 
 for the cold, hard man who had wrought so 
 much unhappiness; and, were it not for Ynys 
 and Annaik he would, for the moment, have 
 rejoiced that in Judik Kerbastiou Nemesis had 
 appeared. At his first mention of the daughters, 
 Ian had looked at him closely. 
 
 'Will you be for going back to that house, 
 Alan MacAlasdair ? ' he asked, and in a tone so 
 marked that even in his distress Alan noticed 
 it. 
 
 ' Do you wish me to go back, Ian ? , 
 
 ' God forbid. I hear the dust on the threshold 
 rising at the thought."' 
 
 'We are both in an alien land, Ian.' 
 
 ' Och is diombaan gach cas air fir gun eolas — 
 Fleeting is the foot in a strange land,' said the 
 islander, using a phrase familiar to Gaels away 
 from the isles. 
 
 ' But what can I do ? ' 
 
 'Sure you can go to your own place, Alan 
 MacAlasdair. There you can think of what 
 you will do. And before you go I must tell 
 you that your father's brother Uilleam is dead, 
 
THE HERDSMAN 151 
 
 so that you have no near kin now except the 
 son of the brother of your father, Donnacha 
 Ban as he is called — or was called, for I will be 
 hearing a year or more ago that he, too, went 
 under the wave. He would be your own age, and 
 that close as a month or week, I am thinking. 1 
 
 ' Nevertheless, Ian, I cannot go without seeing 
 my cousin Ynys once more."' 
 
 6 You will never be for marrying the daughter 
 of the man that murdered your father P 1 Ian 
 spoke in horrified amaze, adding : ' Sure, if that 
 were so, it would indeed mean that they may 
 talk as they like of this southland as akin to 
 Gaeldom, though that is not a thought that 
 will bring honey to the hive of my brain — for 
 no man of the isles would ever forget there that 
 the blood of a father cries up to the stars them- 
 selves."' 
 
 ' Have you no message for me, from . . . from 
 . . . her? 1 
 
 'Ay,** answered the old islesman reluctantly, 
 'here it is. I did not give it to you before, 
 for fear you should be weak. 1 
 
 Without a word, Alan snatched the pencilled 
 
152 GREEN FIRE 
 
 note. It had no beginning or signature, and 
 ran simply : i My mother is dead, too. After 
 all that has happened to-day I know we cannot 
 meet. I know, too, that I love you with all 
 my heart and soul : that I have given you my 
 deathless devotion. But, unless you say " Come,' 1 
 it is best that you go away at once, and that 
 we never see each other again.' 
 
 At that, Alan had torn off the half sheet, 
 and written a single word upon it. 
 
 It was : Come. 
 
 This he gave to Ian, telling him to go straight- 
 way with it, and hand the note to Ynys 
 in person. ' Also, 1 he added, ' fulfil unquestion- 
 ingly everything she may tell you to do or not 
 to do.' 
 
 An hour or more after Ian had gone, and 
 when a dark still gloaming had begun, he came 
 again, but this time with Ynys. 
 
 He and she walked together: behind them 
 came four horses, led by Ian. When the lovers 
 met, they stood silent for some moments. Then 
 Ynys, knowing what was in Alan's mind, asked 
 if she were come for life or death. 
 
THE HERDSMAN 153 
 
 6 1 love you, dear,' was his answer : ' I cannot 
 live without you. If you be in truth the 
 daughter of the man who slew my father, why 
 should his evil blood be our undoing also ? God 
 knows but that even thus may his punishment 
 be begun. All his thoughts were upon you and 
 Annaik.'' 
 
 6 Annaik is gone.' 
 
 * Gone ! Annaik gone ! Where has she 
 gone ? ' 
 
 4 1 know nothing. She sent me a line to say 
 that she would never sleep in Kerival again: 
 that something had changed her whole life : that 
 she would return three days hence for our 
 mother's funeral : and that thereafter she and 
 I would never meet.' 
 
 In a flash, Alan saw many things ; but deepest 
 of all he saw the working of doom. On the 
 very day of his triumph, Tristran de Kerival had 
 lost all, and found only that which made life 
 more bitter than death. Stammeringly, now, 
 Alan sought to say something about Annaik, 
 that there was a secret, an unhappiness, a sorrow, 
 which he must explain. 
 
154 GREEN FIRE 
 
 But at that Ynys had pointed to the dim 
 grey-brown sea. 
 
 ' There, Alan, let us bury it all there ; every- 
 thing, everything ! Either you and I must find 
 our forgetfulness there, or we must drown therein 
 all this terrible past which has an inexplicable, 
 a menacing present. Dear, I am ready. Shall 
 it be life or death ? ' 
 
 < Life.' 
 
 That was all that was said. Alan leaned 
 forward, and, tenderly kissing her, took her in 
 his arms. Then he turned to Ian. 
 
 'Ian mac Iain, I call you to witness that I 
 take Ynys de Kerival as my wife ; that in this 
 taking, all the blood-feud that lies betwixt us 
 is become as nought ; and that the past is past. 
 Henceforth I am Alan Carmichael, and she here 
 is Ynys Carmichael.'' 
 
 At that, Ian had bowed his head. It was 
 against the tradition of his people ; but he loved 
 Ynys as well as Alan, and secretly he was glad. 
 
 Thereafter, Alan and Ynys had mounted, 
 and ridden slowly southward through the dusk ; 
 
THE HERDSMAN 155 
 
 while Ian followed on the third horse, with, in 
 rein, its companion, on which were the apparel 
 and other belongings which Ynys had hurriedly 
 put together. 
 
 They were unmolested in their flight. Indeed, 
 they met no one, till, at the end of the Forest of 
 Kerival, they emerged near the junction with the 
 high road at a place called Trois Chenes. Then 
 a woman, a gypsy vagrant, insisted disaster would 
 ensue if they went over her tracks that night 
 without first doing something to avert evil. They 
 must cross her hand with silver, she said. 
 
 Impatient as he was, Alan stopped, and allowed 
 the gypsy to have her will. 
 
 She looked at the hand Ynys held out through 
 the obscurity, and almost immediately dropped 
 it. 
 
 1 Beware of crossing the sea,' she said :   I see 
 your death floating on a green wave. 1 
 
 Ynys shuddered, but said nothing. When 
 Alan put out his hand the woman held it in hers 
 for a few seconds, and then pondered it intently. 
 
 4 Be quick, my good woman,' he urged, 'we 
 are in a hurry. ' 
 
156 GREEN FIRE 
 
 ' It will be behind the shadow when we meet 
 again,' was all her reply : enigmatical words, 
 which yet in his ears had a sombre significance. 
 But he was even more perturbed by the fact that, 
 before she relinquished his hand, she stooped 
 abruptly and kissed it. 
 
 As the fugitives rode onward slowly along the 
 dusky high-road, Alan whispered to Ynys that 
 he could not forget the gypsy: that in some 
 strange way she haunted him : and even seemed 
 to him to be linked to that disastrous day. 
 
 ' That may well be,' Ynys had answered : * for 
 the woman was Annaik.' 
 
 Onward they rode till they came to Haut- 
 Kerloek, the ancient village on the slope of 
 the hill above the little town. There, at the 
 ' Gloire de Kerival ? they stopped for the night. 
 Next morning they resumed their journey, and 
 the same afternoon reached St. Blaise-sur-Loise, 
 where they knew they would L find the body of 
 General Alasdair Carmichael. 
 
 And it was thus that, by the strange irony of 
 fate, Alasdair Carmichael, who had never seen 
 
THE HERDSMAN 157 
 
 his son, who in turn had unknowingly witnessed 
 his father's tragic death, was followed to the 
 grave-side by that dear child for whom he had 
 so often longed, and that by Alan's side was the 
 daughter of the man who had done so much to 
 ruin his life and had at the last slain him. At 
 the same hour, on the same day, Lois de Kerival 
 was laid to her rest, with none of her kith and 
 kin to lament her : for Tristran the Silent was 
 alone in his austere grief. Two others were 
 there, at whom the Cure looked askance : the 
 rude woodlander, Judik Kerbastiou, and another 
 forest estray, a gypsy woman with a shawl over 
 her head. The latter must have known the 
 Marquise's charity, for the good woman wept 
 quietly throughout the service of committal, 
 and, when she turned to go, the Cure heard 
 a sob in her throat. 
 
 It took but a brief while for Alan to settle 
 his father's few affairs. Among the papers, he 
 found one addressed to himself: a long letter 
 wherein was set forth not only all necessary 
 details concerning Alan's mother and father, 
 but also particulars about the small fortune that 
 
158 GREEN FIRE 
 
 was in keeping for him in Edinburgh, and the 
 lonely house on the lonely isle of Rona, among 
 the lonely Hebrides. 
 
 In St. Blaise Alan and Ynys went before the 
 civil authorities, and were registered as man and 
 wife. The next day they resumed their journey 
 towards that exile which they had in view. 
 
 Thereafter, slowly, and by devious ways, they 
 fared far north. At Edinburgh Alan had learned 
 all that was still unexplained. He found that 
 there would be enough money to enable Ynys and 
 himself to live quietly, particularly at so remote 
 a place as Rona. The castle or * keep ' there was 
 unoccupied, and had, indeed, long been un- 
 tenanted save by the widow woman Kirsten Mac- 
 donald, Ian's sister. In return for this home she 
 had kept the solitary place in order. All the 
 furniture that had been there, when Alasdair 
 Carmichael was last in Rona, remained. In 
 going thither, Alan and Ynys would be going 
 home. 
 
 The westward journey was a revelation to 
 them. Never had there been so beautiful a 
 May, they were told. They had lingered long 
 
THE HERDSMAN 159 
 
 at the first place where they heard the sweet 
 familiar sound of the Gaelic. Hand in hand, 
 they wandered over the hillsides of which the 
 very names had a poignant home-sweetness : and 
 long hot hours they spent together on lochs of 
 which Lois de Kerival had often spoken with 
 deep longing in her voice. 
 
 As they neared the extreme of the mainland 
 Alan's excitement deepened. He spoke hardly a 
 word on the day the steamer left the Argyll 
 coast behind, and headed for the dim isles of the 
 sea, Coll and Tiree : and again on the following 
 day Ynys saw how distraught he was, for, about 
 noon, the coast-line of Uist loomed faintly blue 
 upon the dark Atlantic horizon. 
 
 At Loch Boisdale, where they disembarked, 
 and whence they had to sail the remainder of 
 their journey in a fishing-schooner, which by good 
 fortune was then there, and disengaged, Ian was 
 for the first time recognised. All that evening, 
 Alan and Ynys talked with the islesmen, Alan 
 finding to his delight his Gaelic was so good that 
 none for a moment suspected he had not lived in 
 the isles all his life. That of Ynys, however, 
 
160 GREEN FIRE 
 
 though fluent, had a foreign sound which puzzled 
 the admiring fishermen. 
 
 It was an hour after sunrise when the Blue 
 Herring sailed out of Loch Boisdale, and it was 
 an hour before sunset when the anchor dropped 
 in Borosay Haven. 
 
 On this night Alan perceived the first sign of 
 aloofness among his fellow-Gaels. Hitherto every 
 one had been cordial, and he and Ynys had re- 
 joiced in the courtesy and genial friendliness 
 which they had everywhere encountered. 
 
 But in Balnaree ( 4 Baille'-na-Righ '), the little 
 village wherein was focussed all that Borosay 
 had to boast of in the way of civic life, he could 
 not disguise from himself that again and again 
 he was looked at askance. 
 
 Rightly or wrongly he took this to be re- 
 sentment because of his having wed Ynys, the 
 daughter of the man who had murdered Alasdair 
 Carmichael. So possessed was he by this idea 
 that he did not remember how little likely the 
 islanders were to know aught concerning Ynys, 
 or indeed anything beyond the fact that Alasdair 
 MacAlasdair Rhona had died abroad. 
 
THE HERDSMAN l6l 
 
 The trouble became more than an imaginary 
 one when, on the morrow, he tried to find a 
 boat for the passage to Rona. But for the 
 Frozen Hand, as the triple-peaked hill to the 
 south of Balnaree was called, Rona would have 
 been visible : nor was it, with a fair wind, more 
 than an hour's sail distant. 
 
 Nevertheless, every one to whom he spoke 
 showed a strange reluctance. At last, in despair, 
 he asked an old man of his own surname why 
 there was so much difficulty. 
 
 In the island way, Sheumas Carmichael re- 
 plied that the people on Elleray, the island 
 adjacent to Rona, were incensed. 
 
 ' But incensed at what ? , 
 
 'Well, at this and at that. But for one 
 thing they are not having any dealings with 
 the Carmichaels. They are all Macdonalds 
 there, Macdonalds of Barra. There is a feud, 
 I am thinking; though I know nothing of it, 
 no, not I. 1 
 
 'But, Seumas mac Eachainn, you know well 
 yourself that there are almost no Carmichaels 
 to have a feud with ! There are you and your 
 
 L 
 
162 GREEN FIRE 
 
 brother, and there is your cousin over at Sgdrr- 
 Bhan on the other side of Borosay. Who else is 
 there? 1 
 
 To this the man could say nothing. Distressed, 
 Alan sought Ian and bade him find out what he 
 could. He also, however, was puzzled and even 
 seriously perturbed. That some evil was at 
 work could not be doubted ; and that it was 
 secret boded ill. 
 
 Ian was practically a stranger in Borosay 
 because of his long absence. But though this 
 for a time shut him off from his fellow-islanders, 
 and retarded his discovery of what strange 
 reason accounted for the apparently inexplicable 
 apathy shown by the fishermen of Balnaree — an 
 apathy, too, so much to their own disadvantage 
 — it enabled him, on the other hand, to make a 
 strong appeal to the clan-side of the islanders"* 
 natures. After all, Ian mac Iain mhic Dhonuill 
 was one of them, and though he came there 
 with a man in the shadow (though this phrase 
 was not used in Ian's hearing) that was not his 
 fault. 
 
 Suddenly Ian remembered a fact that he should 
 
THE HERDSMAN \63 
 
 have thought of at once. There was the old 
 woman, his sister Silis. He would speak of her, 
 and of their long separation, and of his desire 
 to see her again before he died. 
 
 This made a difficult thing easy. Within an 
 hour, a boat was ready to take the travellers to 
 the Isle of the Caves — as Rona was called locally. 
 Before the hour was gone, they, with the stores 
 of food and other things they had been advised 
 to take with them, were slipping seaward out of 
 Borosay Haven. 
 
 The moment the headland was rounded the 
 heights of Rona came into view. Great gaunt 
 cliffs they are, precipices of black basalt : though 
 on the south side they fall away in grassy de- 
 clivities, which hang a greenness over the wander- 
 ing wave for ever sobbing round that desolate 
 shore. But it was not till the Sgorr-Dhu, a 
 conical black rock at the south-east end of the 
 island, was reached that the stone keep, known 
 as Caisteal Rhona, came in sight. 
 
 It stands at the landward extreme of a rocky 
 ledge, on the margin of a green airidh. West- 
 ward is a small dark-blue sea-loch, no more than 
 
164 GREEN FIRE 
 
 a narrow haven. To the north-west rise sheer 
 the ocean-fronting precipitous cliffs : northward, 
 above the green pasture and a stretch of heather, 
 is a woodland-belt of some three or four hundred 
 pine-trees. It might well be called I-monair, as 
 Aodh the Islander sang of it : for it is ever 
 echoing with murmurous noises. If the waves 
 dash against it from the south or east, a loud 
 crying is upon the faces of the rocks ; if from 
 the north or north-east, there is a dull iteration, 
 and amid the pines a continual soughing sea- 
 voice. But when the wind blows from the south- 
 west, or the huge Atlantic billows surge out of 
 the west, Rona is a place filled with an indescrib- 
 able tumult. Through the whole island goes the 
 myriad echo of a hollow booming, with an in- 
 cessant sound as though waters were pouring 
 through vast hidden conduits in the heart of 
 every precipice, every rock, every boulder. This 
 is because of the arcades of which it consists, 
 for from the westward the island has been 
 honeycombed by the sea. No living man has 
 ever traversed all those mysterious winding sea- 
 galleries. Many have perished in the attempt. 
 
THE HERDSMAN 165 
 
 In the olden days the Uisteans and Barrovians 
 sought refuge there from the marauding Danes 
 and other pirates out of Lochlin : and in the 
 time when the last Scottish king took shelter 
 in the west many of his island-followers found 
 safety among these perilous arcades. 
 
 Some of them reach to an immense height. 
 These are filled with a pale green gloom, which 
 in fine weather, and at noon or towards sundown, 
 becomes almost radiant. But most have only a 
 dusky green obscurity, and some are at all times 
 dark with a darkness that has seen neither sun, 
 nor moon, nor star for unknown ages. Some- 
 times, there, a phosphorescent wave will spill a 
 livid or a cold blue flame, and for a moment 
 a vast gulf of dripping basalt be revealed; but 
 day and night, night and day, from year to year, 
 from age to age, that awful wave-clamant dark- 
 ness prevails unbroken. 
 
 To the few who know some of the secrets of 
 the Passages, it is possible, except when a gale 
 blows from any quarter but the north, to thrid 
 these dim arcades in a narrow boat, and so to 
 pass from the Hebrid Seas to the outer Atlantic. 
 
1.66 GREEN FIRE 
 
 But to one unaware of the clues there might well 
 be no return to the light of the open day : for 
 in that maze of winding galleries and dim, sea- 
 washed and for ever unlitten arcades, there is 
 only a hopeless bewilderment. Once bewildered, 
 there is no hope; and the lost adventurer will 
 remain there idly drifting from barren corridor 
 to corridor, till he perish of hunger and thirst, 
 or, maddened by the strange and appalling gloom 
 and the unbroken silence — for there the muffled 
 voice of the sea is no more than a whisper — he 
 leap into the green waters which for ever slide 
 stealthily from ledge to ledge. 
 
 From Ian mac Iain Alan had heard of such an 
 isle, though he had not known it to be Rona. 
 Now, as he approached his wild remote home 
 he thought of these death -haunted corridors, 
 avenues of the grave as they are called in the 
 ' Cumha Fhir-Mearanach Aonghas mhic Dhonuill 
 — the Lament of mad Angus Macdonald." 
 
 When, at last, the unwieldy brown coble sailed 
 into the little haven, it was to create unwonted 
 excitement among the few fishermen who put in 
 there frequently for bait. A group of eight or 
 
THE HERDSMAN 167 
 
 ten was upon the rocky ledge beyond Caisteal- 
 Rhona, among them the elderly woman who was 
 sister to Ian mac Iain. 
 
 At Alan's request, Ian went ashore in advance, 
 in a small punt. He was to wave his hand if all 
 were well, for Alan could not but feel appre- 
 hensive on account of the strange ill-will that 
 had shown itself at Borosay. 
 
 It was with relief that he saw the signal when, 
 after Ian had embraced his sister, and shaken 
 hands with all the fishermen, he had explained 
 that the son of Alasdair Carmichael was come 
 out of the south, and with a beautiful young 
 wife, too, and was henceforth to live at Caisteal- 
 Rhona. 
 
 All there uncovered, and waved their hats. 
 Then a shout of welcome went up, and Alan's 
 heart was glad, and that of Ynys. 
 
 But the moment he had set foot on land he 
 saw a startled look come into the eyes of the 
 fishermen, a look that deepened swiftly into one 
 of aversion, almost of fear. 
 
 One by one the men moved away, awkward 
 in their embarrassment. Not one came forward 
 
168 GREEN FIRE 
 
 with outstretched hand, nor said a word of 
 welcome. 
 
 At first amazed, then indignant, Ian reproached 
 them. They received his words in ashamed 
 silence. Even when with a bitter tongue he 
 taunted them, they answered nothing. 
 
 8 Silis, 1 said Ian, turning in despair to his sister, 
 ( what is the meaning of this folly ? ' 
 
 But even she was no longer the same. Her 
 eyes were fixed upon Alan with a look of dread 
 and indeed of horror. It was unmistakable, and 
 Alan himself was conscious of it, with a strange 
 sinking of the heart. 
 
 1 Speak, woman,' he demanded. ' What is the 
 meaning of this thing ? Why do you and these 
 men look at me askance ? ' 
 
 6 God forbid,' answered Silis Macdonald with 
 white lips ; \ God forbid that we look at the son 
 of Alasdair Carmichael askance. But , 
 
 'But what?' 
 
 With that the woman put her apron over 
 her head and moved away, muttering strange 
 words. 
 
 ' Ian, what is this mystery ? ' 
 
THE HERDSMAN 169 
 
 It was Ynys who spoke now, for on Alan's 
 face was a shadow, and in his eyes a deep 
 gloom. She too was white, and had fear in her 
 eyes. 
 
 1 How am I for knowing, Ynys-nighean-Lhois ? 
 It is all a darkness to me also. But I will find 
 out.' 
 
 That, however, was easier for Ian to say than 
 to do. Meanwhile, the brown coble tacked back 
 to Borosay, and the fishermen sailed away to 
 the Barra coasts, and Alan and Ynys were left 
 solitary in their wild and remote home. 
 
 But in that very solitude they found heal- 
 ing. From what Giorsal hinted, they came to 
 believe that the fishermen had experienced one 
 of those strange dream-waves which, in remote 
 isles, occur at times, when whole communities 
 will be wrought by the self-same fantasy. When 
 day by day went past, and no one came nigh 
 them, at first they were puzzled and even re- 
 sentful, but this passed, and soon they were glad 
 to be alone. Only Ian knew that there was 
 another cause for the inexplicable aversion that 
 had been shown. But he was silent, and he 
 
170 GREEN FIRE 
 
 kept a patient watch for the hour that the future 
 held in its dim shroud. As for Silis, she was 
 dumb : but no more looked at Alan askance. 
 
 And so the weeks went. Occasionally a fishing 
 smack came with the provisions, for the weekly 
 despatch of which Alan had arranged at Loch 
 Boisdale, and sometimes the Barra men put in 
 at the haven, though they would never stay 
 long, and always avoided Alan as much as was 
 possible. 
 
 In that time Alan and Ynys came to know 
 and love their strangely beautiful island home. 
 Hours and hours at a time they spent exploring 
 the dim, green, winding sea-galleries, till at last 
 they knew the main corridors thoroughly. They 
 even ventured into some of the narrow snake- 
 like passages, but never for long, because of the 
 awe and dread these held, silent estuaries of 
 the grave. 
 
 There, too, they forgot all the sorrow that 
 had been theirs, forgot the shadow of death 
 which lay between them. They buried all in 
 the deep sea of love that was about the rock 
 of their passion. For, as of another Alan and 
 
THE HERDSMAN 171 
 
 another woman, the mirdhei was upon them : the 
 dream-spell of love. 
 
 Day by day, with them as with that Alan and 
 Sorcha of whom they had often heard, their joy 
 had grown, like a flower moving ever to the 
 sun ; and as it grew the roots deepened, and 
 the tendrils met and intertwined round the two 
 hearts, till at last they were drawn together 
 and became one, as two moving rays of light 
 will converge into one beam, or the song of 
 two singers blend and become as the song of 
 one. 
 
 As the weeks passed, the wonder of the dream 
 became at times a brooding passion, at times 
 almost an ecstasy. Ossian and the poets of old 
 speak of a strange frenzy that came upon the 
 brave: and, sure, there is a mircath of another 
 kind now and again in the world, in the green, 
 remote places at least. Aodh the islander, and 
 Ian-Ban of the hills, and other dreamer-poets 
 know of it — the mirdhei, the passion that is 
 deeper than passion, the dream that is beyond 
 the dream. This, that was once the fair doom 
 of another Alan and Sorcha, of whom Ian 
 
172 GREEN FIRE 
 
 had often told him with hushed voice and 
 dreaming eyes, was now upon himself and 
 Ynys. 
 
 They were Love to each other. In each the 
 other saw the beauty of the world. Hand in 
 hand they wandered among the wind-haunted 
 pines, or along the thyme and grass of the 
 summits of the precipices : or they sailed for 
 hours upon the summer seas, blue lawns of mov- 
 ing azure, glorious with the sun-dazzle and lovely 
 with purple cloud - shadows and amethystine 
 straits of floating weed : or, by noontide, or at 
 the full of the moon, they penetrated far into 
 the dim green arcades, and were as shadows in a 
 strange and fantastic but ineffably sweet and 
 beautiful dream. 
 
 Day was lovely and desirable to each, for day 
 dreamed to night : and night was sweet as life 
 because it held the new day against its dark 
 beating heart. Week after week passed, and to 
 Ynys as to Alan it was as the going of the grey- 
 owPs wing, swift and silent. 
 
THE HERDSMAN 173 
 
 Then it was that, on a day of the days, Alan 
 was suddenly stricken with a new and startling 
 dread. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 AT THE EDGE OF THE SHADOW 
 
 In the hour that this terror came upon him, 
 Alan was alone upon the high slopes of Rona, 
 where the grass fails and the moor purples at an 
 elevation of close on a thousand feet above the 
 sea. 
 
 The day had been cloudless since sunrise. 
 The immeasurable range of ocean expanded like 
 the single petal of an azure flower : all of one 
 unbroken blue save for the shadows of the 
 scattered isles and for the fugitive amethyst 
 where floating weed suspended. An immense 
 number of birds congregated from every quarter. 
 Guillemots and skuas and puffins, cormorants 
 and northern-divers, everywhere darted, swam, or 
 slept upon the listless sea, whose deep suspiration 
 
THE HERDSMAN 175 
 
 no more than lifted a league-long calm here and 
 there, to lapse insensibly even as it rose. 
 Through the not less silent quietudes of air the 
 sea-gulls swept with curving flight, and the 
 narrow-winged terns made a constant shimmer. 
 At remote altitudes the gannet motionlessly 
 drifted. Ocean-ward the great widths of calm 
 were rent now and again by the shoulders of the 
 porpoises which followed the herring- trail, their 
 huge black revolving bodies looming large above 
 the silent wave. Not a boat was visible any- 
 where : not even upon the most distant horizons 
 did a brown sail fleck itself duskily against the 
 skyward wall of steely blue. 
 
 In the great stillness which prevailed, the 
 noise of the surf beating around the promontory 
 of Aonaig was audible as a whisper : though even 
 in that windless hour the indescribable rumour 
 of the sea moving through the arcades of the 
 island filled the hollow of the air overhead. 
 Ever since the early morning, Alan had moved 
 under a strange gloom. Out of that golden 
 glory of midsummer a breath of joyous life 
 should have reached his heart, but it was not so. 
 
176 GREEN FIRE 
 
 For sure, there is sometimes in the quiet beauty 
 of summer an air of menace, a breath, a sus- 
 picion, a dream-premonition, of suspended force, 
 a force antagonistic and terrible. All who have 
 lived in these lonely isles know the peculiar in- 
 tensity of this summer melancholy. No clamour 
 of tempestuous wind, no prolonged sojourn of 
 untimely rains, no long baffling of mists in all 
 the drear inclemencies of that remote region, can 
 produce the same ominous and even paralys- 
 ing gloom which sometimes can be born of in- 
 effable peace and beauty. Is it that in the 
 human soul there is mysterious kinship with the 
 outer soul which we call Nature : and that in 
 these few supreme hours which come at the full 
 of the year, we are sometimes suddenly aware of 
 the tremendous forces beneath and behind us, 
 momently quiescent ? 
 
 Standing with Ynys upon a grassy headland, 
 Alan had looked long at the dream-blue perspec- 
 tives to the southward, seeing there at first no 
 more than innumerable hidden pathways of the 
 sun, with blue-green and silver radiance im- 
 measurable, and the very breath and wonder and 
 
THE HERDSMAN 177 
 
 mystery of ocean life suspended as in a dream. 
 In the hearts of each, deep happiness brooded. 
 Perhaps it was out of these depths that rose the 
 dark flower of this sudden apprehension that 
 came upon him. It was no fear for Ynys, 
 nor for himself, not for the general weal : 
 but a profound disquietude, a sense of inevitable 
 ill. Ynys felt the tightening of his hand, and 
 saw the sudden change in his face. It was often 
 so with him. The sun-dazzle, at which he would 
 look with endless delight, finding in it a tangible 
 embodiment of the fugitive rhythms of cosmic 
 music which floated everywhere, would sometimes 
 be a dazzle also in his brain. In a moment a 
 strange bewilderment would render unstable 
 those perilous sands of the human brain which 
 are for ever laved by the strange waters of the 
 unseen life. When this mood or fantasy, or un- 
 calculable accident occurred, he was often wrought 
 either by vivid dreams, or creative work, or else 
 would lapse into a melancholy from which not 
 even the calling love of Ynys would arouse him. 
 
 When she saw in his face and in his eyes 
 this sudden bewildered look, and knew that in 
 
 M 
 
178 GREEN FIRE 
 
 some mysterious way the madness of the beauty 
 of the sea had enthralled him, she took his hand 
 and moved with him inland. In a brief while 
 the poignant fragrance from the trodden thyme 
 and short hill-grass, warmed by the sun, rose as 
 an intoxication. For that hour the gloom went. 
 But when, later, he wandered away from Caisteal- 
 Rhona, once more the sense of foreboding was 
 heavy upon him. Determined to shake it off, 
 he wandered high among the upland solitudes. 
 There a cool air for ever moved even in the 
 noons of August : and there, indeed, at last, 
 there came upon him a deep peace. With joy, 
 his mind dwelt over and over again upon all 
 that Ynys had been and was to him ; upon the 
 depth and passion of their love ; upon the mystery 
 and wonder of that coming life which was theirs 
 and yet was not of them, itself already no more 
 than an unrisen wave or an unbloomed flower, 
 but yet as inevitable as they, and dowered with 
 the light which is beyond where mortal shadows 
 end. Strange, this passion of love for what 
 is not : strange this deep longing of the woman 
 — the longing of the womb, the longing of the 
 
THE HERDSMAN 179 
 
 heart, the longing of the brain, the longing of the 
 soul — for the perpetuation of the life she shares 
 in common with one whom she loves : strange this 
 longing of the man, a longing deep-based in his 
 nature as the love of life or the fear of death, for 
 the gaining, from the woman whom he loves, this 
 personal hostage against oblivion. For, indeed, 
 something of this so commonplace, and yet so 
 divine and mysterious tide of birth, which is for 
 ever at the flow upon this green world, is due to an 
 instinctive fear of cessation. The perpetuation 
 of life is the unconscious protest of humanity 
 against the destiny of mortality. Thoughts such 
 as these were often with Alan now : often, too, 
 with Ynys, in whom indeed all the latent 
 mysticism which had ever been a bond between 
 them had latterly been continually evoked. 
 Possibly it was the mere shadow of his great 
 love ; possibly it was some fear of the dark way 
 wherein the sunrise of each new birth is involved ; 
 possibly it was no more than the melancholy of 
 the isles, that so wrought him on this perfect 
 day. Whatsoever the reason, a deeper despond- 
 ency prevailed as noon waned into afternoon, 
 
180 GREEN FIRE 
 
 An incident, deeply significant to him, in that 
 mood, at that time, happened then. A few 
 hundred yards away from where he stood, half 
 hidden in a little glen where a fall of water 
 made a continual spray among the shadows of 
 the rowan and birch, was the bothie of a woman, 
 the wife of Neil MacNeill, a fisherman of Aonaig. 
 She was there, he knew, for the summer pastur- 
 ing : and, even as he recollected this, he heard the 
 sound of her voice as she sang somewhere down 
 by the burn-side. Moving slowly towards the 
 corrie, he stopped at a mountain ash which over- 
 hung a deep pool. Looking down he saw the 
 woman, Morag MacNeill, washing and peeling 
 potatoes in the clear brown water. And as she 
 washed and peeled, she sang an old-time shealing 
 hymn of the Virgin-Shepherdess, of Michael the 
 White, and of Columan the Dove. It was a 
 song that, far away in Brittany, he had heard 
 Lois, the mother of Ynys, sing in one of those 
 rare hours when her youth came back to her with 
 something of youth's passionate intensity. He 
 listened now to every word of the doubly familiar 
 Gaelic, and when Morag finished, the tears were 
 
THE HERDSMAN 181 
 
 in his eyes, and he stood for a while as one 
 entranced : — 1 
 
 ' A Mhicheil mhin ! nan steud geala, 
 A choisin cios air Dragon fala, 
 Air ghaol Dia' us Mhic Muire, 
 Sgaoil do sgiath oirnn dian sinn uile, 
 Sgaoil do sgiath oirnn dian sinn uile. 
 
 A Mhoire ghradhach ! Mathair Uain-ghil, 
 Cohhair oirnne, Oigh na li-uaisle ; 
 A rioghainn uai'reach! a bhauchaille nan trend! 
 Cum ar cuallach cuartaich sinn le cJieil, 
 Cum ar cuallach cuartaich sinn le cheil. 
 
 A Chalum-Chille ! chairdeil, chaoimh, 
 An ainm Athar, Mic, 'us Spioraid Naoimh, 
 Trid na Trithinn ! trid na Triath ! 
 Comraig sinne, gleidh ar trial, 
 Comraig sinne, gleidh ar trial. 
 
 Athair I A Mhic I A Spioraid Naoimh ! 
 Bi'eadh an Tri-Aon leinn, a la's a dh-oidhche ! 
 'S air chul nan tonn, no air thaobh nam beann, 
 Bi'dh ar Mathair leinn, 's bith A lamhfo'r ceann, 
 Bi'dh ar Mathair leinn, 's bith A lamhfo'r ceann.' 
 
 1 This hymn was taken down in the Gaelic and translated by 
 Mr. Alexander Carmichael of South Uist. 
 
182 GREEN FIRE 
 
 ( Thou gentle Michael of the white steed, 
 Who subdued the Dragon of blood, 
 For love of God and the Son of Mary, 
 Spread over us thy wing, shield us all ! 
 Spread over us thy wing, shield us all ! 
 
 Mary Beloved ! Mother of the White Lamb, 
 Protect us, Thou Virgin of nobleness, 
 Queen of beauty ! Shepherdess of the flocks ! 
 Keep our cattle, surround us together, 
 Keep our cattle, surround us together. 
 
 Thou Columba, the friendly, the kind, 
 
 In name of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit 
 
 Holy, 
 Through the Three-in-One, through the Three, 
 Encompass us, guard our procession, 
 Encompass us, guard our procession. 
 
 Thou Father ! thou Son ! thou Spirit Holy ! 
 Be the Three-One with us day and night, 
 And on the crested wave, or on the mountain side, 
 Our Mother is there, and Her arm is under our 
 
 head, 
 Our Mother is there, and Her arm is under our 
 
 head.' 
 
 After she had ceased, Alan found himself 
 repeating whisperingly, and again and again, 
 
 ' Bi'eadh an Tri-Aon leinn, a la's a dh-oidhche ! 
 'S air chul nan tonn, no air thaobh nam beann. ' 
 
THE HERDSMAN 183 
 
 Suddenly the woman glanced upward, perhaps 
 because of the shadow that moved against the 
 green bracken below. With a startled gesture, 
 she sprang to her feet. Alan looked at her 
 kindly, saying with a smile, 'Sure, Morag nic 
 Tormaid, it is not fear you need be having of 
 one who is your friend.' Then, seeing that the 
 woman stared at him with intent gaze, wherein 
 was terror as well as surprise, he spoke to her 
 again. 
 
 'Sure, Morag, I am no stranger, that you 
 should be looking at me with those foreign eyes.'' 
 He laughed as he spoke, and made as though he 
 were about to descend to the burn-side. Unmis- 
 takably, however, the woman did not desire his 
 company. He saw that, with the pain and be- 
 wilderment which had come upon him whenever 
 the like happened, as so often it had happened 
 since he had come to Rona. 
 
 'Tell me, Bean Neil MacNeill, what is the 
 meaning of this strangeness that is upon you ? 
 Why do you not speak ? Why do you turn away 
 your head ? • 
 
 Suddenly the woman flashed her black eyes 
 upon him. 
 
184 GREEN FIRE 
 
 ' Have you ever heard of am Buchaille Ban — 
 am Buchaille Buidhe t ' 
 
 He looked at her in amaze. Am Buchaille 
 Ban ! . . . The fair-haired Herdsman, the yellow- 
 haired Herdsman ! What could she mean ? In 
 days gone by, he knew, the islanders had, in the 
 evil time after Culloden, so named the fugitive 
 Prince who had sought shelter in the Hebrides : 
 and in some of the runes of an older day still the 
 Saviour of the World was sometimes so called, 
 just as Mary was called Bhuachaille nan treud, 
 Shepherdess of the Flocks. But, as Alan knew 
 well, no allusion to either of these was intended. 
 
 ' Who is the Herdsman of whom you speak, 
 Morag ? ' 
 
 'Is it no knowledge you have of him at all 
 Alan MacAlasdair ? ' 
 
 ' None. I know nothing of the man, nothing 
 of what is in your mind. Who is the Herds- 
 man ? ' 
 
 'You will not be putting evil upon me because 
 that you saw me here by the pool before I saw 
 you ? ' 
 
 ' Why should I, woman ? Why do you think 
 
THE HERDSMAN 185 
 
 that I have the power of the evil eye ? Sure, I 
 have done no harm to you or yours, and wish 
 none. But if it is for peace to you to know it, it 
 is no evil I wish you, but only good. The Blessing 
 of Himself be upon you and yours and upon your 
 house.' 
 
 The woman looked relieved, but still cast her 
 furtive gaze upon Alan, who no longer attempted 
 to join her. 
 
 * I cannot be speaking the thing that is in my 
 mind, Alan MacAlasdair. It is not for me to be 
 saying that thing. But if you have no know- 
 ledge of the Herdsman, sure it is only another 
 wonder of the wonders, and God has the sun on 
 that shadow, to the Stones be it said. 1 
 
 1 But tell me, Morag, who is the Herdsman of 
 whom you speak ? ' 
 
 For a minute or more the woman stood regard- 
 ing him intently. Then slowly, and as with 
 difficulty, she spoke — 
 
 ' Why have you appeared to the people upon 
 the isle, sometimes by moonlight, sometimes by 
 day or in the dusk ? and have foretold upon one 
 and all who dwell here black gloom and the red 
 
186 GREEN FIRE 
 
 flame of sorrow? Why have you, who are an 
 outcast because of what lies between you and 
 another, pretended to be an emissary of the 
 Son — ay, for sure, even, God forgive you, to be 
 the Son Himself? ' 
 
 Alan stared at the woman in blank amaze. 
 For a time he could utter no word. Had some 
 extraordinary delusion spread among the islanders, 
 and was there in the insane accusation of this 
 woman the secret of that inexplicable aversion 
 which had so troubled him ? 
 
 ' This is all an empty darkness to me, Morag. 
 Speak more plainly, woman. What is all this 
 madness that you say ? When have I uttered 
 aught of having any mission, or of being other 
 than I am ? When have I foretold evil upon you 
 or yours, or upon the isles beyond ? What man 
 has ever dared to say that Alan MacAlasdair of 
 Rona is an outcast, and what sin is it that lies 
 between me and another of which you know ? ' 
 
 It was impossible for Morag MacNeill to doubt 
 the sincerity of the man who spoke to her. She 
 crossed herself, and muttered the words of a sian 
 for the protection of the soul against the demon 
 
THE HERDSMAN 187 
 
 powers. Still, even while she believed in Alan's 
 sincerity, she could not reconcile it with that 
 terrible and strange mystery with which rumour 
 had filled her ears. So, having nothing to say 
 in reply to his eager questions, she cast down her 
 eyes and kept silence. 
 
 ' Speak, Morag, for heaven's sake ! Speak if 
 you are a true woman, you that see a man in 
 sore pain, in pain too for that of which he 
 knows nothing, and of the ill of which he is 
 guiltless ! ' 
 
 But, keeping her face averted, the woman 
 muttered simply : ' I have no more to say. 1 
 With that she turned and moved slowly along 
 the pathway which led from the pool to her 
 hillside bothie. 
 
 With a sigh, Alan turned and moved across 
 the moor. What wonder, he thought, that deep 
 gloom had been upon him that day ? Here, in 
 the woman's mysterious words, was the shadow 
 of that shadow. 
 
 Slowly, brooding deep over what he had 
 heard, he traversed the Mona-nan-Con, as the 
 hill-tract there was called, till he came to the 
 
188 GREEN FIRE 
 
 rocky wilderness known as the Slope of the 
 Caverns. 
 
 There for a time he leaned against a high 
 boulder, idly watching a few sheep nibbling the 
 short grass which grew about the apertures of 
 some of the many caves which disclosed them- 
 selves in all directions. Below and beyond, he 
 saw the illimitable calm beauty of the scene : 
 southward, with no break anywhere ; eastward, 
 a sun-blaze void ; south-westward, the faint, blue 
 film of the coasts of Ulster ; westward, the same 
 immeasurable windless expanse. From where he 
 stood he could just hear the murmur of the surge 
 whispering all round the isle ; the surge that 
 even on days of profoundest calm makes a mur- 
 murous rumour among the rocks and shingle 
 of the island shores. Not upon the moor 
 side, but in the blank hollows of the caves 
 around him, he heard, as in gigantic shells, the 
 moving of a strange and solemn rhythm : wave- 
 haunted shells indeed, for the echo that was 
 bruited from one to the other came from be- 
 neath, from out of those labyrinthine corridors 
 and dim shadowy arcades, wherethrough the 
 
THE HERDSMAN 189 
 
 intense green glooms the Atlantic waters lose 
 themselves in a vain wandering. 
 
 For long he leaned there, revolving in his mind 
 the mystery of Morag MacNeill's words. Then, 
 abruptly, the stillness was broken by the sound 
 of a dislodged stone. So little did he expect the 
 foot of a fellow, that he did not turn at what he 
 thought to be the slip of a sheep. But when upon 
 the slope of the grass, just beyond where he 
 stood, a dusky blue shadow wavered fantasti- 
 cally, he swung round with a sudden instinct of 
 dread. 
 
 And this was the dread which, at the end of 
 the third month after he and Ynys had come to 
 Rona, was upon Alan Carmichael. 
 
 For, there, standing quietly by another boulder, 
 at the mouth of another cave, stood a man who 
 was in all appearances identical with himself. 
 Looking at this apparition, he beheld one of the 
 same height as himself, with hair of the same 
 hue, with eyes the same, and features the same, 
 with the same carriage, the same smile, even the 
 same expression. No, it was there, and there 
 alone, that a difference was. 
 
190 GREEN FIRE 
 
 Sick at heart, Alan wondered if he looked 
 upon his own wraith. Familiar as he was with 
 the legends of his people, it would be no strange 
 thing to him that there, upon the hillside, should 
 appear the phantasm of himself. Had not old 
 Ian Maclan — and that, too, though far away in 
 a strange land — seen the death of Lois Mac- 
 donald moving upward from her feet to her 
 knees, from her knees to her waist, from her 
 waist to her neck and, just before the end, how 
 the shroud darkened along the face until it hid 
 the eyes ? Had he not often heard from her, 
 from Ian, of the second self which so often 
 appears beside the living when already the shadow 
 of doom is upon him whose hours are numbered ? 
 Was this, then, the reason of what had been his 
 inexplicable gloom ? Was he indeed at the 
 extreme of life ; was his soul amid shallows, 
 already a rock upon a blank inhospitable shore ? 
 If not, who or what was this second self which 
 leaned there negligently, looking at him with 
 scornfully smiling lips, but with intent un- 
 smiling eyes ? 
 
 Then,- slowly, there came into his mind this 
 
THE HERDSMAN 191 
 
 thought : how could a phantom, that was itself 
 intangible, throw a shadow upon the grass, as 
 though it were a living corporeal being ? Sure, 
 a shadow there was indeed. It lay between the 
 apparition and himself. A story heard in boy- 
 hood came back to him ; instinctively, he stooped, 
 and, lifting a stone, flung it midway into the 
 shadow. 
 
 ' Go back into the darkness,"* he cried, ' if out 
 of the darkness you came ; but, if you be a living 
 thing, put out your hands ! ' 
 
 The shadow remained motionless ; though when 
 Alan looked again at his second self he saw that 
 the scorn which had been upon the lips was now 
 in the eyes also. Ay, for sure, that was scornful 
 laughter which lay in those cold wells of light. No 
 phantom that ; a man he, even as Alan himself. 
 His heart pulsed like that of a trapped bird, but 
 even in the speaking, his courage came back to 
 him. 
 
 ' Who are you ? 1 he asked in a low voice that 
 was strange even in his own ears. 
 
 1 Am Buchaille,' replied the man in a voice as 
 low and strange : 'lam the Herdsman.' 
 
192 GREEN FIRE 
 
 A new tide of fear surged in upon Alan. 
 That voice, was it not his own ; that tone, was 
 it not familiar in his ears ? When the man 
 spoke, he heard himself speak ; sure, if he were 
 am Buchaille Ban, Alan, too, was the Herdsman 
 — though what fantastic destiny might be his 
 was all unknown to him. 
 
 6 Come near,' said the man, and now the 
 mocking light in his eyes was lambent as cloud- 
 fire : ( come near, O Buchaille Ban ! ' 
 
 With a swift movement, Alan leapt forward, 
 but as he leaped his foot caught in a spray of 
 heather, and he stumbled and nigh fell. When 
 he recovered himself, he looked in vain for the 
 man who had called him. There was not a sign, 
 not a trace of any living being. For the first few 
 moments he believed it had all been a delusion. 
 Mortal being did not appear and vanish in that 
 ghostly way. Still, surely he could not have 
 mistaken the blank of that place for a speaking 
 voice, nor out of nothingness have fashioned the 
 living phantom of himself ? Or could he ? With 
 that, he strode forward and peered into the wide 
 arch of the cavern by which the man had stood. 
 
THE HERDSMAN 193 
 
 He could not see far into it, but so far as it was 
 possible to see, he discerned neither man nor 
 shadow of man, nor anything that stirred; no, 
 not even the dust of a bearnan-bride, that grew 
 on a patch of grass a yard or two within the dark- 
 ness, had lost one of its aerial pinions. He drew 
 back, dismayed. Then, suddenly, his heart leapt 
 again, for, beyond all question, all possible doubt, 
 there, in the bent thyme just where the man had 
 stood, was the imprint of his feet. Even now 
 the green sprays were moving forward. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 MYSTERY 
 
 An hour passed, and Alan Carmichael still stood 
 by the entrance to the cave. So immovable was 
 he that a ewe listlessly wandering there in search 
 of cooler grass lay down after a while, drowsily 
 regarding him with her amber-coloured eyes. All 
 Iris thought was intent upon the mystery of what 
 he had seen. No delusion this, he was sure. That 
 was a man whom he had seen. It might well 
 have been some one whom he did not know, 
 though that were unlikely, of course, for on so 
 small an island, inhabited by less than a score 
 of crofters, it was scarcely possible for one to live 
 there for many weeks and not know the name 
 and face of every soul upon the isle. Still, a 
 stranger might have come. Only, if this were 
 so, why should he call himself the Herdsman ? 
 
THE HERDSMAN 195 
 
 There was but one herdsman on Rona, and he 
 Angus MacCormic, who lived at Einaval on the 
 north side. In these outer isles the shepherd and 
 the herdsman are appointed by the community, 
 and no man is allowed to be one or the other 
 at will, any more than to be maor or constabal. 
 Then, too, if this man were indeed herdsman, 
 where was his imir ionailt, his browsing tract? 
 Looking round him Alan could perceive nowhere 
 any fitting pasture. Surely no herdsman would 
 be content with such an imir a bhuchaille — rig 
 of the herdsman — as that rocky wilderness, where 
 the soft green grass grew in patches under this 
 or that boulder, on the sun-side of this or that 
 mountain-ash. Again, he had given no name, 
 but called himself simply Am Buchaille. This 
 was how the woman Morag had spoken : did 
 she indeed mean this very man, and, if so, what 
 import lay in her words? But far beyond all 
 other bewilderment for him was that strange, 
 that indeed terrifying likeness to himself : a like- 
 ness so absolute, so convincing, that he knew he 
 might himself easily have been deceived had he 
 beheld the apparition in any place where it was 
 
196 GREEN FIRE 
 
 possible that a reflection could have misled 
 him. 
 
 Brooding thus, eye and ear were both intent 
 for the faintest sight or sound. But, from the 
 interior of the cavern, not a breath came. Once, 
 from among the jagged rocks high on the west 
 slope of Ben Einaval, he fancied he heard an 
 unwonted sound: that of human laughter, but 
 laughter so wild, so remote, so unmirthful, that 
 fear was in his heart. It could not be other 
 than imagination, he said to himself: for in 
 that lonely place there was none to wander idly 
 at that season, and none who, wandering, would 
 laugh there, solitary. 
 
 It was with an effort that Alan at last deter- 
 mined to probe the mystery. Stooping, he 
 moved cautiously into the cavern, and groped 
 his way along a narrow ledge which led, as he 
 thought, into another larger cave. But this 
 proved to be one of the innumerable hollow 
 corridors which intersect the honeycombed slopes 
 of the Isle of Caves. To wander far in these 
 lightless passages would be to court inevitable 
 death. Long ago the piper whom the Prionnsa- 
 
THE HERDSMAN 197 
 
 Ban, the Fair Prince, loved to hear in his exile, 
 he that was called Rory M'Vurich, penetrated 
 one of the larger hollows to seek there for a child 
 that had idly wandered into the dark. Some 
 of the clansmen, with the father and mother of 
 the little one, waited at the entrance to the cave. 
 For a time there was silence : then, as agreed 
 upon, the sound of the pipes was heard, to which 
 a man named Lachlan M'Lachlan replied from 
 the outer air. The skirl of the pipes within 
 grew fainter and fainter. Louder and louder 
 Lachlan played upon his chantar ; shriller and 
 shriller grew the wild cry of the Jeadan ; but for 
 all that, fainter and fainter waned the sound of 
 the pipes of Rory M'Vurich. Generations have 
 come and gone upon the isle, and still no man 
 has heard the returning air which Rory was to 
 play. He may have found the little child, but 
 he never found his backward path, and in the 
 gloom of that honeycombed hill he and the child 
 and the music of the pipes lapsed into the same 
 stillness. Remembering this legend, familiar to 
 him since his boyhood, Alan did not dare to 
 venture farther. At any moment, too, he knew 
 
198 GREEN FIRE 
 
 he might fall into one of the innumerable crevices 
 which opened into the sea-corridors hundreds of 
 feet below. Ancient rumour had it that there 
 were mysterious passages from the upper heights 
 of Ben Einaval, which led into the intricate 
 heart mazes of these perilous arcades. But 
 for a time he lay still, straining every sense. 
 Convinced at last that the man whom he sought 
 had evaded all possible quest, he turned to re- 
 gain the light. Brief way as he had gone, this 
 was no easy thing to do. For a few moments, 
 indeed, Alan lost his self-possession when he 
 found a uniform dusk about him, and could 
 scarce discern which of the several branching 
 narrow corridors was that by which he had 
 come. But following the greener light he 
 reached the cave, and soon, with a sigh of 
 relief, was upon the sun-sweet warm earth 
 again. 
 
 How more than ever beautiful the world 
 seemed to him : how sweet upon the eyes were 
 cliff and precipice, the wide stretch of ocean, 
 the flying birds, the sheep grazing on the scanty 
 pastures, and, above all, the homely blue smoke 
 
THE HERDSMAN 199 
 
 curling faintly upward from the fisher crofts on 
 the headland east of Aonaig. 
 
 Purposely he retraced his steps by the way of 
 the glen. He would see the woman Morag 
 MacNeill again, and insist on some more explicit 
 word ; but, when he reached the burnside once 
 more, the woman was not there. Possibly she 
 had seen him coming, and guessed his purpose : 
 half he surmised this, for the peats in the hearth 
 were brightly aglow, and on the hob beside 
 them the boiling water hissed in a great iron 
 pot, wherein were potatoes. In vain he sought, 
 in vain called. Impatient at last he walked 
 around the bothie and into the little byre be- 
 yond. The place seemed deserted. The matter, 
 small as it was, added to his profound dis- 
 quietude. Resolved to sift the mystery, he 
 began to walk swiftly down the slope. By the 
 old shealing of Cnoc-na-Monie, now forsaken, 
 his heart leaped at sight of Ynys coming to 
 meet him. At first he thought he would say 
 nothing of what had happened. But with Ynys 
 his was ever an impossible silence, for she knew 
 every change in his mind as a seaman knows the 
 
200 GREEN FIRE 
 
 look of the sky and sea. Moreover, she had her- 
 self been all day oppressed by something of the 
 same inexplicable apprehension. 
 
 When they met she put her hands on his 
 shoulders, and looked at him lovingly with ques- 
 tioning eyes. Ah, he found rest and hope in 
 those deep pools of quiet light, whence the dream- 
 ing love rose comfortingly to meet his own yearn- 
 ing gaze. 
 
 'What is it, Alan mo-ghray, what is the 
 trouble that is upon you ? ' 
 
 ' It is a trouble, Ynys, but one of which I can 
 speak little, for it is little I know.' 
 
 6 Have you heard or seen aught that gives you 
 fear?' 
 
 ' I have seen a man here upon Rona whom I 
 have not seen or met before, and it is one whose 
 face is known to me, and whose voice too, and 
 one whom I would not meet again. , 
 
 ' Did he give you no name, Alan ? , 
 
 'None.' 
 
 * Whence did he come ? Whither did he go ? ' 
 
 'He came out of the shadow, and into the 
 shadow he went.'' 
 
THE HERDSMAN 201 
 
 Ynys looked steadfast at her husband, her 
 wistful gaze searching deep into his unquiet eyes, 
 and thence from feature to feature of the face, 
 which had become strangely worn, for all the joy 
 that lay between them. 
 
 But she said no more upon what he had told 
 her. 
 
 'I, too, Alan mo run, have heard a strange 
 thing to-day. You know old Marsail Macrae ? 
 She is ill now with a slow fever, and she thinks 
 that the shadow which she saw lying upon her 
 hearth last Sabbath, when nothing was there 
 to cause any shadow, was her own death, come 
 for her, and now waiting there. I spoke to the 
 old woman comfortingly, but she would not have 
 peace, and her eyes looked at me strangely. 
 
 < " What is it, Marsail ? " I asked at last. To 
 which she replied mysteriously — 
 
 '"Ay, ay, for sure, it was I who saw you 
 first." 
 
 6 " Saw me first, Marsail ?" 
 
 ' " Ay, you and Alan MacAlasdair." 
 
 6 " When and where was this sight upon you 
 that you speak of ? " 
 
202 GREEN FIRE 
 
 4 " It was one month before you and he came 
 to Rona." 
 
 6 This startled me, and I asked her to tell 
 me her meaning. At first, I could make little 
 of what was said, for she muttered low, and 
 moved her head idly this way and that, 
 moaning in her pain. But on my taking her 
 hand, she looked at me again ; and then, ap- 
 parently without an effort, told me this thing : 
 
 ' " On the seventh day of the month before you 
 came, and by the same token it was on the 
 seventh day of the month following that you 
 and Alan MacAlasdair came to Caisteal-Rhona, 
 I was upon the shore at Aonaig, listening to 
 the crying of the wind against the great pre- 
 cipice of Biolacreag. With me were Roderick 
 Macrae and Neil MacNeill, Morag MacNeill 
 and her sister Elsa, and we were singing the 
 hymn for those who were out on the wild sea 
 that was roaring white against the cliffs of 
 Berneray, for some of our people were there, 
 and we feared for them. Sometimes one sang 
 and sometimes another. And, sure, it is remem- 
 
THE HERDSMAN 203 
 
 bering I am, how when I had called out with 
 my old wailing voice — 
 
 1 Biodh an Tri-aon leinn, a la's a dh-oidche ; 
 
 'S air chul nan tonn, no air thaobh nam beann. — 
 
 ' Be the Three-in-One with us day and night ; 
 On the crested wave, when waves run high.' — 
 
 I had just sung this, and we were all listening 
 to the sound of it caught by the wind and 
 whirled up against the black face of Biolacreag, 
 when suddenly I saw a boat come sailing quite 
 into the haven. I called out to those about 
 me, but they looked at me with white faces, 
 for no boat was there, and it was a rough, 
 wild sea it was in that haven. 
 
 1 " And in that boat I saw three people sitting, 
 and one was you, Ynys nighean Lhois, and one 
 was Alan MacAlasdair, and one was a man 
 who had his face in shadow, and his eyes 
 looked into the shadow at his feet. I knew 
 not who you were, nor whence you came, nor 
 whether it was for Rona you were, nor any- 
 thing at all; but I saw you clear, and I told 
 those about me what I saw. And Seumas 
 
204 GREEN FIRE 
 
 MacNeill, him that is dead now, and brother to 
 Neil here at Aonaig, he said to me: ' Who was 
 that whom you saw walking in the dusk the 
 night before last? 1 'Alasdair MacAlasdair 
 Carmichael,' answered one at that. Seumas 
 muttered, looking at those about him, 'Mark 
 what I say, for it is a true thing ; that Alasdair 
 Carmichael of Rona is dead now, because Marsail 
 here saw him walking in the dusk when he was 
 not upon the island; and now you, Neil, and 
 you, Roderick, and all of you will be for think- 
 ing with me that the man and the woman in 
 the boat whom Marsail sees now will be the son 
 and the daughter of him who has changed.' 
 
 ' " Well, well, it is a true thing that we each 
 of us thought that thought, but when the days 
 went and nothing more came of it, the memory 
 of the seeing went too. Then there came the 
 day when the coble of Aulay MacAulay came 
 out of Borosay into Caisteal-Rhona haven. Glad 
 we were to see the face of Ian mac Iain again, 
 and to hear the sob of joy coining out of the 
 heart of Silis his sister : but when you and 
 Alan MacAlasdair came on shore, it was my 
 
THE HERDSMAN 205 
 
 voice that then went from mouth to mouth, 
 for I whispered to Morag MacNeill who was 
 next me, that you were the twain that I had 
 seen in the boat." 
 
 4 Well, Alan,"* Ynys added, with a grave 
 smile, 'I spoke gently to old Marsail, and told 
 her that after all there was no evil in that 
 seeing, and that for sure it was nothing at all, 
 at all, to see two people in a boat, and nothing 
 coming of that, save happiness for those two, 
 and glad content to be here, with hope like a 
 white swallow nesting for aye under the eaves 
 of our house. 
 
 1 Marsail looked at me with big eyes. 
 
 '"It is no white swallow that builds there, 
 Ynys Bean Alan," she said. 
 
 * But when I asked her what she meant by that, 
 she would say no more. No asking of mine 
 would bring the word to her lips; only she 
 shook her head and averted her gaze from my 
 face. Then, seeing that it was useless, I said 
 to her — 
 
 1 " Marsail, tell me this : was that sight of 
 
206 GREEN FIRE 
 
 yours the sole thing that made the people here 
 on Rona look askance at Alan Mac Alasdair ? " 
 
 'For a time she stared at me, with the dim 
 unrecognising eyes of those who are ill and in 
 the shadow of death ; then, suddenly, they 
 brightened, and she spoke — 
 
 <" It is not all." 
 
 6 " Then what more is there, Marsail Macrae ? " 
 
 * " That is not for the saying. I have no more 
 to say. Let you, or your man, go elsewhere : 
 that which is to be, will be. To each his own 
 end." 
 
 ' " Then tell me this at least," I asked, " is there 
 peril for Alan or for me in this island ? " 
 
 1 But from that moment Marsail would say no 
 more, and indeed I saw that a swoon was upon 
 the old woman, and that she heard not or saw 
 not.' 
 
 After this, Ynys and Alan walked slowly 
 home together, hand in hand, both silent and 
 revolving in their mind, as in a dim dusk, 
 that mystery which, vague and unreal at first, 
 had now become a living presence, and haunted 
 them by day and night. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 IN THE GREEN ARCADES 
 
 1 In the shadow of pain, one may hear the foot- 
 steps of joy."* So runs a proverb of old. 
 
 It was a true saying for Alan and Ynys. That 
 night they lay down in pain, their hearts heavy 
 with the weight of some burden which they felt 
 and did not know. On the morrow they woke 
 to the rapture of a new day, a day of absolute 
 beauty, when the stars grew pale in the cloudless 
 blue sky before the uprising of the sun, while the 
 last vapour lifted a white wing from the sea, and 
 a dim spiral mist carried skyward the memory of 
 inland dews. The whole wide wilderness of ocean 
 was of living azure aflame with gold and silver. 
 Around the promontories of the isles, the brown- 
 sailed fish-boats of Barra and Berneray, of Boro- 
 say and Seila, moved blithely hither and thither. 
 Everywhere the rhythm of life pulsed swift and 
 
208 GREEN FIRE 
 
 strong. The first sound which had awakened the 
 sleepers was of a loud singing of fishermen who 
 were putting out from Aonaig. The coming of 
 a great shoal of mackerel had been signalled, and 
 every man and woman of the near isles was alert 
 for the take. The first sign had been the swift 
 congregation of birds, particularly the gannets 
 and skuas. And as the men pulled at the oars, 
 or hoisted the brown sails, they sang a snatch of 
 an old-world tune, wont to be chanted at the first 
 coming of the birds when spring- tide is on the 
 flow again : — 
 
 ' Bui' cheas dha 'n Ti thaine na Gugachan 
 Thaine 's na h-Eoin-Mhora cuideriu, 
 Cailin dugh ciaru bo 's a chro ! 
 Bo dhonn ! bo dhonn ! bo dhonn bheadarrach ! 
 Bo dhonn a ruin a bhlitheadh am baine dhuit 
 Ho ro ! mo gheallag I ni gu rodagach ! 
 Cailin dugh ciaru bo 's a chro, — 
 Na h-eoin air tighinn ! cluinneam an ceol ! ' 
 
 ' Thanks to the Being, the Gannets have come, 
 Yes ! and the Great Auks along with them. 
 Dark-haired girl ! — a cow in the fold ! 
 Brown cow ! brown cow ! brown cow, beloved ho ! 
 Brown cow ! my love ! the milker of milk to thee ! 
 Ho ro ! my fair-skinned girl — a cow in the fold, 
 And the birds have come ! — glad sight I see ! ' 
 
THE HERDSMAN 209 
 
 Eager to be of help, Alan put off' in his boat 
 and was soon among the fishermen, who in their 
 new excitement were forgetful of all else than 
 that the mackerel were come, and that every 
 moment was precious. For the first time Alan 
 found himself no unwelcome comrade. Was it, 
 he wondered, because that there upon the sea 
 whatever of shadow dwelt about him on the 
 land was no longer visible ? 
 
 All through that golden noon, he and the 
 others worked hard. From isle to isle went the 
 chorus of the splashing oars and splashing nets, 
 of the splashing of the fish and the splashing 
 of gannets and gulls, of the splashing of the tide 
 leaping blithely against the sun-dazzle, and the 
 innumerous rippling wash moving out of the 
 west : all this blent with the loud joyous cries, 
 the laughter and the hoarse shouts of the men 
 of Barra and the adjacent islands. It was close 
 upon dusk before the Rona boats put into the 
 haven of Aonaig again : and by that time none 
 was blither than Alan Carmichael, who in that 
 day of happy toil had lost all the gloom and 
 apprehension of the day before, and now made 
 o 
 
210 GREEN FIRE 
 
 haste to Caisteal-Rhona to add to his joy by a 
 sight of Ynys in their home. 
 
 When, however, he got there, there was no 
 Ynys to see. f She had gone,' said Silis Mac- 
 donald, ' she had gone out in the smaller boat 
 midway in the afternoon, and had sailed around 
 to Aoidhu,' — the great scaur which ran out be- 
 yond the precipices at the southwest of Rona. 
 
 This Ynys often did : and of late more and 
 more often. Ever since she had come to the 
 Hebrid Isles, her love of the sea had deepened, 
 and had grown into a passion for its mystery and 
 beauty. Of late, too, something impelled to a 
 more frequent isolation : a deep longing to be 
 where no eye could see and no ear hearken. 
 Those strange dreams which in a confused way 
 had haunted her mind in her far Breton home, 
 came oftener now and more clear. Sometimes, 
 when she had sat in the twilight at Kerival 
 holding her mother's hand and listening to tales 
 of that remote North to which her heart had 
 ever yearned, she had suddenly lost all conscious- 
 ness of the speaker, or of the things said, and had 
 let her mind betaken captive by her uncontrolled 
 
THE HERDSMAN 211 
 
 imagination, till in spirit she was far away, and 
 sojourned in strange places, hearing a language 
 that she did not know, and yet which she under- 
 stood, and dwelt in a past or a present which 
 she had never seen and which yet was familiar. 
 
 Since Ynys had known she was with child, this 
 visionariness had been intensified, this longing 
 had become more and more a deep need. Even 
 with Alan she felt at times the intrusion of an 
 alien influence. If in her body was a mystery, a 
 mystery also was in her brain and in her heart. 
 
 Alan knew this, and knowing, understood. It 
 was for gladness to him that Ynys should do as 
 she would : that in these long hours of solitude 
 she drank deep of the elixir of peace : and that 
 this way of happiness was open to her as to him. 
 Never did these isolations come between them : 
 indeed they were sometimes more at one then 
 than when they were together, for all the deep 
 happiness which sustained both upon the strong 
 waters of their love. 
 
 So, when Alan heard from Silis that Ynys had 
 sailed westward, he was in no way alarmed. But 
 when the sun had set, and over the faint blue film 
 
212 GREEN FIRE 
 
 of the Isle of Tiree the moon had risen, and still 
 no sign of Ynys, he became restless and uneasy. 
 Silis begged him in vain to eat of the supper she 
 had prepared. Idly he moved to and fro along 
 the rocky ledge, or down by the pebbly shore, or 
 across the green airidh, eager for a glimpse of her 
 whom he loved so passing well. 
 
 At last, unable longer to endure a growing 
 anxiety, he put out in his boat, and sailed swiftly 
 before the slight easterly breeze which had pre- 
 vailed since moonrise. So far as Aoidhu, all the 
 way from Aonaig, there was not a haven any- 
 where, nor even one of the sea-caverns which 
 honeycombed the isle beyond the headland. A 
 glance, therefore, showed him that Ynys had not 
 yet come back that way. It was possible, though 
 unlikely, that she had sailed right round Rona : 
 unlikely, because in the narrow straits to the 
 north, between Rona and the scattered islets 
 known as the Innse-mhara, strong currents pre- 
 vailed, and particularly at the full of the tide, 
 when they swept north-eastward, dark and swift 
 as a mill-race. 
 
 Once the headland was passed, and the sheer 
 
THE HERDSMAN 213 
 
 precipitous westward cliffs loomed black out of 
 the sea, he became more and more uneasy. As 
 yet there was no danger ; but he saw that a swell 
 was moving out of the west, and whenever the 
 wind blew that way the sea-arcades were filled 
 with a lifting perilous wave, and escape from 
 them was difficult and often impossible. Out of 
 the score or more great corridors which opened 
 between Aoidhu and Ardgorm, it was difficult to 
 know into which to hazard entry in quest of 
 Ynys. Together they had examined all of them. 
 Some twisted but slightly, others wound sinu- 
 ously till the green serpentine alleys, flanked by 
 basalt walls hundreds of feet high, lost themselves 
 in an indistinguishable maze. 
 
 But that which was safest, and wherein a boat 
 could most easily make its way against wind or 
 tide, was the huge cavernous corridor known 
 locally as the Uamh-nan-roin, the Cave of the 
 Seals. 
 
 For this opening Alan steered his boat. Soon 
 he was within the wide corridor. Like the great 
 cave at Staffa, it was wrought as an aisle in some 
 natural cathedral; the rocks, too, were fluted 
 
214 GREEN FIRE 
 
 columnarly and rose in flawless symmetry as though 
 graven by the hand of man. At the far end of 
 this gigantic aisle, there diverges a long narrow 
 arcade, filled by day with the green shine of the 
 water, and by night when the moon is up with 
 a pale froth of light. It is one of the few 
 where there are open gateways for the sea and 
 the wandering light ; and, by its spherical shape, 
 almost the only safe passage in a season of 
 heavy wind. Half-way along this arched arcade 
 a corridor leads to a round cup-like cavern, 
 midway in which stands a huge mass of black 
 basalt, in shape suggestive of a titanic altar. 
 Thus it must have impressed the imagination of 
 the islanders of old, for by them, even in a remote 
 day, it was called Teampull - nan - Mhara, the 
 Temple of the Sea. Owing to the narrowness 
 of the corridor, and to the smooth unbroken 
 walls which rise sheer from the green depths 
 into an invisible darkness, the Strait of the 
 Temple is not one wherein to linger long, save 
 in a time of calm. 
 
 Instinctively, however, Alan quietly headed his 
 boat along this narrow way. When, silently, he 
 
THE HERDSMAN 215 
 
 emerged from the arcade, he could just discern 
 the mass of basalt at the far end of the cavern. 
 But there, seated in her boat, was Ynys : 
 apparently idly adrift, for one oar floated in 
 the water alongside, and the other suspended 
 listlessly from the tholes. 
 
 His heart had a suffocating grip as he saw her 
 whom he had come to seek. Why that absolute 
 stillness, that strange listless indifference? For 
 a dreadful moment, he feared that death had 
 indeed come to her in that lonely place, where, 
 as an ancient legend had it, a woman of old time 
 had perished, and ever since had wrought death 
 upon any who came thither solitary and un- 
 happy. 
 
 But at the striking of the shaft of his oar 
 against a ledge, Ynys gave a low cry, and looked 
 at him with startled eyes. Half rising from 
 where she crouched in the stern, she called to 
 him in a voice that had in it something strangely 
 unfamiliar. 
 
 ' I will not hear,' she cried, ' I will not hear ! 
 Leave me ! Leave me ! ' 
 
 Fearing that the desolation of the place had 
 
216 GREEN FIRE 
 
 wrought upon her mind, Alan swiftly moved 
 towards her. The next moment his boat glided 
 along hers. Stepping from the one to the other, 
 he kneeled beside her. 
 
 ' Ynys-ghaolaiche, Ynys my darling, what is 
 it ? what gives you dread ? There is no harm 
 here. All is well. Look ! See, it is I, Alan, 
 Alan, whom you love ! Listen, dear, do you not 
 know me, do you not know who I am ? It is I, 
 Alan, Alan who loves you ! ' 
 
 Even in that obscure light, he could clearly 
 discern her pale face, and his heart smote him as 
 he saw her eyes turn upon him with a glance 
 wild and mournful. Had she indeed succumbed 
 to the sea-madness which ever and again strikes 
 into a terrible melancholy one here and there 
 among those who dwell in the remote isles ? 
 But even as he looked, he noted another ex- 
 pression come into the beautiful eyes, and 
 almost before he realised what had happened, 
 Ynys's head was on his breast, and she sob- 
 bing with a sudden gladness and passion of 
 relief. 
 
 The dusk deepened swiftly. In those ser- 
 
THE HERDSMAN 217 
 
 pentine arcades darkness grows from hour to 
 hour, even on nights when the moon makes the 
 outer sea a blaze of silver fire. But sweet it was 
 to lie there in that solitary place, where no 
 sound penetrated save the low soughing sigh 
 of ocean, audible there only as the breath of a 
 sleeper; to lie there in each other's arms, and 
 to feel the beating of heart against heart, 
 knowing that whether in the hazard of life or 
 death all was well, since they two were there 
 and together. 
 
 For long, Ynys could say no word. And as 
 for Alan — too glad was he to have her again, 
 to know that she lived indeed, and that his fear 
 of the sea-madness was an idle fantasy ; too glad 
 was he to urge her to speak, when her recovered 
 joy was still sweet in her heart. But at last she 
 whispered to him, how that she had sailed west- 
 ward from Caisteal-Rhona, having been overcome 
 by the beauty of the day, and longing to be 
 among those mysterious green arcades where 
 thought rose out of the mind like a white bird, 
 and flew among shadows in strange places, bring- 
 ing back with it upon its silent wings the rumour 
 
218 GREEN FIRE 
 
 of strange voices, and oftentimes singing a song 
 of what ears hear not. Deeply upon the two 
 had lain the thought of what was to be: the 
 thought of the life she bore within her, that was 
 the tangible love of her and of Alan, and yet 
 was so strangely and remotely dissociate from 
 either. Happy in happy thoughts, and strangely 
 wrought by vague imaginings, she had sailed past 
 precipice after precipice, and so at last into the 
 Strait of the Temple. Just before the last light 
 of day had begun to glide out of the pale green 
 water, she had let her boat drift idly alongside 
 the Teampull-Mhara. There, for a while, she 
 had lain, drowsily content, dreaming her dream. 
 Then, suddenly her heart had given a leap like a 
 doe in the bracken, and the pulses in her veins 
 swung like stars on a night of storm. 
 
 For there, in that nigh unreachable and forever 
 unvisited solitude, was the figure of a man. He 
 stood on the summit of the huge basalt altar, 
 and appeared to have sprung from out of the 
 rock ; or, himself a shadowy presence, to have 
 grown out of the obscure unrealities of the dark- 
 ness. She had stared at him, fascinated, speechless. 
 
THE HERDSMAN 219 
 
 When she had said this, Ynys stopped abruptly, 
 for she felt the trembling of Alan's hand. 
 
 4 Go on, 1 he said hoarsely, ' go on. Tell me 
 all. 1 
 
 To his amaze, she did not seem perturbed in 
 the way he had dreaded when she began to tell 
 what she had seen. 
 
 1 But did you notice nothing about him, Ynys 
 . . . about his face, his features ? ' 
 
 ' Yes. His eyes filled me with strange joy. 1 
 
 ' With joy ? O Ynys, Ynys, do you know 
 whom — what — it was you saw ? It was a vision, 
 a nothingness, a mere phantom ; and that phan- 
 tom was . . . was . . . myself ! , 
 
 ' You, Alan ! O no, Alan-aghray ; dear, you 
 do not know whom I saw — nor do I, though I 
 know it was not you. 1 
 
 4 We will talk of this later, my fawn,' Alan 
 muttered. ' Meanwhile, hold on to the ledge, 
 for I wish to examine this mass of rock that they 
 call the Altar/ 
 
 With a spring he was on the ledge. Then, 
 swift and sure as a wild cat, he scaled the huge 
 boulder. 
 
220 GREEN FIRE 
 
 Nothing ; no one. There was not a trace of any 
 human being. Not a bird, not a bat ; nothing. 
 Moreover, even in that slowly blackening darkness 
 he could see that there was no direct connection 
 between the summit or side with the blank precipi- 
 tous wall of basalt beyond. Overhead there was, 
 so far as he could discern, a vault. No human 
 being could have descended through that perilous 
 gulf. 
 
 Was the island haunted, he wondered, as slowly 
 he made his way back to the boat. Or had he 
 been startled into some wild fantasy, and imagined 
 a likeness where none had been ? Perhaps, even, 
 he had not really seen any one. He had read 
 of similar strange delusions. The nerves can 
 soon chase the mind into the dark zone wherein 
 it loses itself. 
 
 Or was Ynys the vain dreamer ? That, indeed, 
 might well be, and she with child, and ever a 
 visionary. Mayhap she had heard some fantastic 
 tale from Morag MacNeill or from old Marsail 
 Macrae : the islanders had sgeul after sgeul of a 
 wild strangeness. 
 
 In silence he guided the boats back into the outer 
 
THE HERDSMAN 221 
 
 arcade, where a faint sheen of moonlight glistered 
 on the water. Thence, in a few minutes, he 
 oared that wherein he and Ynys sat, with the 
 other fastened astern, into the open. 
 
 When the moonshine lay full on her face he 
 saw that she was thinking neither of him nor 
 of where she was. Her eyes were heavy with 
 dream. 
 
 What wind there was blew against their course, 
 so Alan rowed unceasingly. In silence they 
 passed once again the headland of Aoidhu : in 
 silence they drifted past a single light gleaming 
 in a croft near Aonaig, a red eye staring out into 
 the shadow of the sea from the room where the 
 woman Marsail lay dying ; and in silence their 
 keels grided on the patch of shingle in Caisteal- 
 Rhona haven. 
 
 But when, once more, Alan found himself with 
 Ynys in the safe quietudes of the haven, he 
 pressed her eagerly to give him some clear de- 
 scription of the figure she had seen. 
 
 Ynys, however, had become strangely reticent. 
 All he could elicit from her was that the man 
 whom she had seen bore no resemblance to him. 
 
222 GREEN FIRE 
 
 except in so far as he was fair. He was taller, 
 slimmer, and seemed older. 
 
 He thought it wiser not to speak to her on 
 what he himself had seen, or concerning his con- 
 viction that it was the same mysterious stranger 
 who had appeared to both. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE MESSAGE 
 
 For days thereafter Alan haunted that rocky 
 cavernous wilderness where he had seen the 
 Herdsman. 
 
 It was in vain he had everywhere sought to 
 find word of this mysterious dweller in those 
 upland solitudes. At times he believed that 
 there was indeed some one upon the island, of 
 whom, for inexplicable reasons, none there would 
 speak ; but at last he came to the conviction 
 that what he had seen was an apparition, pro- 
 jected by the fantasy of overwrought nerves. 
 Even from the woman Morag MacNeill, to whom 
 he had gone with a frank appeal that won its 
 way to her heart, he learned no more than that 
 an old legend, of which she did not care to 
 speak, was in some way associated with his own 
 coming to Rona. 
 
224 GREEN FIRE 
 
 Ynys, too, never once alluded to the mysterious 
 incident of the green arcades which had so deeply 
 impressed them both : never, that is, after the 
 ensuing day which followed, when, simply and 
 spontaneously, she told Alan that she believed 
 that she had seen a vision. When he reminded her 
 that she had been convinced of its reality, Ynys 
 answered that for days past she had been dream- 
 ing a strange dream ; and that doubtless this had 
 possessed her so that her nerves played her false 
 in that remote and shadowy place. What this 
 dream was she would not confide, nor did he 
 press her. 
 
 But as the days went by, and as no word 
 came to either of any unknown person upon the 
 island, and as Alan, for all his patient wandering 
 and furtive quest, both among the upland caves 
 and in the Green Arcades, found absolutely no 
 trace of him whom he sought, the belief that 
 he had been duped by his imagination deepened 
 almost to conviction. 
 
 As for Ynys, day after day soft veils of dream 
 obscured the bare realities of life. But she, un- 
 like Alan, became more and more convinced that 
 
THE HERDSMAN 225 
 
 what she had seen was indeed no appari- 
 tion. Whatever lingering doubt she had was 
 dissipated on the eve of the night when old 
 Marsail Macrae died. It was dusk when word 
 came to Caisteal-Rhona that Marsail felt the 
 cold wind on the soles of her feet. Ynys went 
 to her at once, and it was in the dark hour which 
 followed that she heard once more, and more 
 fully, the strange story which, like a poisonous 
 weed, had taken root in the minds of the 
 islanders. Already from Marsail she had heard 
 of the Prophet, though strangely enough she 
 had never breathed word of this to Alan, not 
 even when, after the startling episode of the 
 apparition in the Teampull-Mhara, she had, as 
 she believed, seen the Prophet himself. But 
 there in the darkness of the low turfed cottage, 
 with no light in the room save the dull red gloom 
 from the heart of the smoored peats, Marsail, in 
 the attenuated remote voice of those who have 
 already entered into the vale of the shadow, told 
 her this thing : — 
 
 6 Yes, Ynys, wife of Alan MacAlasdair, I will 
 
GREEN FIRE 
 
 be telling you this thing before I change. You 
 are for knowing, sure, that long ago Uilleam, 
 brother of him who was father to your man, had 
 a son ? Yes, you know that, you say, and also 
 that he was called Donnacha Ban? No, mo- 
 run-geal, that is not a true thing that you have 
 heard, that Donnacha Ban went under the wave 
 years ago. He was the seventh son, and was 
 born under the full moon : 'tis Himself will be 
 knowing whether that was for or against him. 
 Of these seven, none lived beyond childhood, ex- 
 cept the two youngest, Kenneth and Donnacha. 
 Kenneth was always frail as a February flower, 
 but he lived to be a man. He and his brother 
 never spoke, for a feud was between them, not 
 only because that each was unlike the other, and 
 that the younger hated the older because thus 
 he was the penniless one — but most because 
 both loved the same woman. I will not be tell- 
 ing you the whole story now, for the breath in 
 my body will soon blow out in the draught that 
 is coming upon me ; but this I will say to you, 
 darker and darker grew the gloom between these 
 brothers. When Kirsteen Macdonald gave her 
 
THE HERDSMAN 227 
 
 love to Kenneth, Donnacha disappeared for a 
 time. Then one day he came back to Borosay, 
 and smiled quietly with his cold eyes when they 
 wondered at his coming again. Now, too, it was 
 noticed that he no longer had an ill-will upon 
 his brother, but spoke smoothly with him and 
 loved to be in his company. But to this day no 
 one knows for sure what happened. For there 
 came a gloaming when Donnacha Ban came back 
 alone in his sailing-boat. He and Kenneth had 
 sailed forth, he said, to shoot seals in the sea- 
 arcades to the west of Rona, but in these 
 dark and lonely passages they had missed each 
 other. At last he had heard Kenneth's voice 
 calling for help, but when he had got to the 
 place it was too late, for his brother had been 
 seized with the cramps, and had sunk deep into 
 the fathomless water. There is no getting a 
 body again that sinks in these sea-galleries. The 
 crabs know that. 
 
 1 Well, this and much more was what Donnacha 
 Ban told to his people. None believed him ; 
 but what could any do? There was no proof; 
 none had ever seen them enter the sea -caves 
 
228 GREEN FIRE 
 
 together. Not that Donnacha Ban sought in 
 any way to keep back those who would fain know 
 more. Not so, he strove to help to find the 
 body. Nevertheless, none believed ; and Kirsteen 
 nic Dhugall Mor least of all. The blight of that 
 sorrow went to her heart. She had death soon, 
 poor thing; but before the cold greyness was 
 upon her she told her father, and the minister 
 that was there, that she knew Donnacha Ban 
 had murdered his brother. One might be say- 
 ing these were the wild words of a woman ; but, 
 for sure, no one said that thing upon Borosay or 
 Rona, or any of these isles. When all was done 
 the minister told what he knew and what he 
 thought to the Lord of the South Isles, and 
 asked what was to be put upon Donnacha Ban. 
 " Exile for ever," said the Chief, " or if he 
 stays here, the doom of silence. Let no man 
 and woman speak to him or give him food or 
 drink, or give him shelter, or let his shadow cross 
 his or hers." 
 
 6 When this thing was told to Donnacha Ban 
 Carmichael he laughed at first ; but as day slid 
 over the rocks where all days fall, he laughed no 
 
THE HERDSMAN 229 
 
 more. Soon he saw that the Chief's word was 
 no empty word, and yet he would not go away 
 from his own place. He could not stay upon 
 Borosay, for his father cursed him ; and no man 
 can stay upon the island where a father's curse 
 moves this way and that forever seeking him. 
 Then some say a madness came upon him, and 
 others that he took wildness to be his way, 
 and others that God put upon him the shadow 
 of loneliness, so that he might meet sorrow there 
 and repent. Howsoever that may be, Donnacha 
 Ban came to Rona, and by the same token it 
 was the year of the great blight, when the 
 potatoes and the corn came to nought, and when 
 the fish in the sea swam away from the isles. In 
 the autumn of that year there was not a soul 
 left on Rona except Silis Macdonald and the old 
 man Ian, her father, who had guard of Caisteal- 
 Rhona for him who was absent. When, once 
 more, smoke rose from the crofts, the rumour 
 spread that Donnacha Ban, the murderer, had 
 made his home among the caves of the upper 
 part of the isle. None knew how this rumour 
 rose, for he was seen of none. The last man 
 
230 GREEN FIRE 
 
 who saw him — and that was a year later — was 
 old Padruic M'Vurich, the shepherd. Padruic 
 said that as he was driving his ewes across the 
 north slope of Ben Einaval in the gloaming he 
 came upon a silent figure seated upon a rock, 
 with his chin in his hands and his elbows on 
 his knees — with the great sad eyes of him staring 
 at the moon that was lifting itself out of the sea. 
 Padruic did not know who the man was. The 
 shepherd had few wits, poor man; and he had 
 known, or remembered, little about the story of 
 Donnacha Ban Carmichael, so when he spoke 
 to the man it was as to a stranger. The man 
 looked at him and said : 
 
 ' " You are Padruic M'Vurich, the shepherd ." 
 
 'At that a trembling was upon old Padruic 
 who had the wonder that this stranger should 
 know who and what he was. 
 
 * " And who will you be, and forgive the say- 
 ing? 1 ' asked he. 
 
 6 "Am Faidh, the Prophet," the man said. 
 
 1 "And what prophet will you be, and what is 
 your prophecy ? " asked Padruic. 
 
 f " I am here because I wait for what is to be, 
 
THE HERDSMAN 231 
 
 and that will be for the birth of a child that is 
 to be a king." 
 
 'And with that, the man said no more, and the 
 old shepherd went silently down through the 
 hillside gloaming, and, heavy with the thoughts 
 that troubled him, followed his ewes down into 
 Aonaig. But after that neither he nor any 
 other saw or heard aught of the shadowy stran- 
 ger : so that all upon Rona felt sure that Padruic 
 had beheld no more than a vision. There were 
 some who thought that he had seen the ghost of 
 the outlaw Donnacha Ban : and mayhap one or 
 two who wondered if the stranger that had said 
 he was a prophet was not Donnacha Ban himself, 
 with a madness come upon him ; but at last these 
 rumours went out to sea upon the wind, and men 
 forgot. But — and it was months and months 
 afterward, and three days before his own death — 
 old Padruic M'Vurich was sitting in the sunset 
 on the rocky ledge in front of his brother's croft, 
 where then he was staying, when he heard a strange 
 crying of seals. He thought little of that ; only, 
 when he looked closer, he saw, in the hollow of 
 the wave hard by that ledge, a drifting body. 
 
232 GREEN FIRE 
 
 "'Am Faidh—Am FaitUi!" he cried, "the 
 Prophet, the Prophet ! " 
 
 'At that his brother and his brother's wife ran 
 to see, but it was nothing that they saw. " It 
 would be a seal," said Pol M'Vurich ; but at that 
 Padruic had shook his head, and said no, for sure, 
 he had seen the face of the dead man, and it was 
 of him whom he had met on the hillside, and 
 that had said he was the Prophet who was 
 waiting there for the birth of a king. 
 
 'And that is how there came about the echo of 
 the thought, that Donnacha Ban had at last, after 
 his madness, gone under the green wave and was 
 dead. For all that, in the months which followed, 
 more than one man said he had caught a glimpse 
 of a figure high up on the hill. The old wisdom 
 says that when Christ comes again, or the Pro- 
 phet who will herald Christ, it will be as a 
 herdsman on a lonely isle. More than one of 
 the old people on Rona and Borosay remembered 
 that sguel out of the seanachas that the tale- 
 tellers knew. There were some who said that 
 Donnacha Ban had never been drowned at all, 
 and that he was this prophet, this Herdsman. 
 
THE HERDSMAN 233 
 
 Others would not have that saying at all, but 
 believed that the mysterious Herdsman was indeed 
 Am Buchaille Ban, the Fair-haired Shepherd, who 
 had come again to redeem the people out of their 
 sorrow. There were even those who said that 
 the Herdsman who haunted Rona was no other 
 than Kenneth Carmichael himself, who had not 
 died, but had had the mind-dark there in the sea 
 caves where he had been lost, and there had come 
 to the knowledge of secret things, and so was at 
 last Am Faidh Chriosd? 
 
 A great weakness came upon the old woman 
 when she had spoken thus far. Ynys feared that 
 she would have breath for no further word, but 
 after a thin gasping, and a listless fluttering of 
 weak hands upon the coverlet, whereon her trem- 
 bling fingers plucked aimlessly at the invisible 
 blossoms of death, she opened her eyes once more 
 and stared in a dim questioning at her who sat 
 by her bedside. 
 
 'Tell me, 1 whispered Ynys, 'tell me, Mar- 
 sail, what thought it is that is in your own 
 mind ? 1 
 
234 GREEN FIRE 
 
 But already the old woman had begun to 
 wander, though Ynys did not know this. 
 
 ' For sure, for sure,' she muttered, 'Am Faidh 
 . . . Am Faidh . . . an* a child will be born . . . 
 an 1 a king he will be, an' . . . that will be the 
 voice of Domhuill, my husband, I am hearing . . . 
 an 1 dark it is, an* the tide comin' in . . . an* , 
 
 Then, sure, the tide came in, and if in that 
 darkness old Marsail M'Vurich heard any voice 
 at all, it was that of Domhuill who years agone 
 had sunk into the wild seas off the head of 
 Barra. 
 
 An hour later, with tears still in her eyes, Ynys 
 walked slowly home through the cloudy night. 
 All she had heard came back to her with a 
 strange familiarity. Something of this, at least, 
 she had known before. Some hints of this mys- 
 terious Herdsman had reached her ears. In some 
 inexplicable way his real or imaginary presence 
 there upon Bona seemed a pre-ordained thing for 
 her. All that dreaming mysticism which had 
 wrought so much of beauty and wonder into her 
 girlhood in Brittany had expanded into a strange 
 flower of the imagination — a flower whose subtle 
 
THE HERDSMAN 235 
 
 fragrance affected her inward life. Sometimes 
 she had wondered if all the tragic vicissitudes 
 which happened at Kerival, with the strange and 
 dream-like life which she and Alan had led since, 
 had so wrought upon her that the unreal became 
 real, and the actual merely phantasmal ; for now 
 she felt more than ever assured that some hidden 
 destiny had controlled all this disastrous mis- 
 chance, had led her and Alan there to that lonely 
 island. 
 
 She knew that the wild imaginings of the 
 islanders had woven the legend of the Prophet, 
 or at any rate of his message, out of the loom of 
 the longing and the deep nostalgia whereon is 
 woven that larger tapestry, the shadow-thridden 
 life of the island Gael. Laughter and tears, 
 ordinary hopes and pleasures, and even joy itself 
 and bright gaiety, and the swift spontaneous 
 imagination of susceptible natures — all this, of 
 course, is to be found with the island Gael as 
 with his fellows elsewhere. But, every here 
 and there are some who have in their minds 
 the inheritance from the dim past of their race, 
 and are oppressed as no other people are 
 
236 GREEN FIRE 
 
 oppressed, by the gloom of a strife between 
 spiritual emotion and material facts. It is the 
 brains of dreamers such as these which clear the 
 mental life of the community ; and it is in these 
 brains are the mysterious looms which weave the 
 tragic and sorrowful tapestries of Celtic thought. 
 It were a madness to suppose that life in the isles 
 consists of nothing but sadness and melancholy. 
 It is not so, or need not be so, for the Gael is a 
 creature of shadow and shine. But whatever the 
 people is, the brain of the Gael hears a music 
 that is sadder than any music there is, and has 
 for its cloudy sky a gloom that shall not go, for 
 the end is near, and upon the westernmost shores 
 of these remote isles, the Voice — as has been truly 
 said by one who has beautifully interpreted his 
 own people — the Voice of Celtic Sorrow may be 
 heard crying Cha till, cha till, cha till mi tuille — 
 I will return, I will return, I will return no 
 more. 
 
 Ynys knew all this well: and yet she too 
 dreamed her Celtic dream — that, even yet, there 
 might be redemption for the people. She did 
 not share the wild hope which some of the older 
 
THE HERDSMAN 237 
 
 islanders held, that Christ Himself shall come 
 again to redeem an oppressed race ; but might 
 not another Saviour arise, another redeeming 
 spirit come into the world? And if so, might 
 not that child of joy be born out of suffering 
 and sorrow and crime : and if so, might not that 
 child be born of her ? 
 
 With startled eyes, she crossed the thyme-set 
 ledge whereon stood Caisteal-Rhona. Was it, 
 after all, a message she had received from him 
 who appeared to her in that lonely cavern of the 
 sea : was he indeed Am Faidh, the mysterious 
 prophet of the isles ? 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE LAUGHTER OF THE KING 
 
 What are dreams but the dust of wayfaring 
 thoughts ? Or whence are they, and what air is 
 upon their shadowy wings ? Do they come out 
 of the twilight of man's mind : are they ghosts 
 of exiles from vanished palaces of the brain : or 
 are they heralds with proclamations of hidden 
 tidings for the soul that dreams ? 
 
 It was a life of dream that Ynys and Alan 
 lived : but Ynys the more, for, as week after 
 week went by, the burden of her motherhood 
 wrought her increasingly. Ever since the night 
 of MarsaiPs death, Alan had noticed that Ynys 
 no longer doubted but that in some way a special 
 message had come to her, a special revelation. On 
 the other hand, he had himself swung back to 
 his former conviction: that the vision he had 
 
THE HERDSMAN 239 
 
 seen upon the hillside was in truth that of a 
 living man. From fragments here and there, a 
 phrase, a revealing word, a hint gleaming through 
 obscure allusions, he came at last to believe that 
 some one bearing a close, and even extraordinary, 
 resemblance to himself lived uponRona. Although 
 upon the island itself he could seldom per- 
 suade any one to speak of the Herdsman, the 
 islanders of Seila and Borosay became gradually 
 less reticent. He ascertained this, at least : that 
 their fear and aversion, when he first came, had 
 been occasioned by the startling likeness between 
 him and the mysterious being whom they called 
 Am Buchaille Ban. On Borosay, he was told, 
 the fishermen believed that the aonaran nan creag, 
 the recluse of the rocks, as commonly they spoke 
 of him, was no other than Donnacha Ban Car- 
 michael, survived there through these many years, 
 and long since mad with his loneliness, and be- 
 cause of the burden of his crime. It was with 
 keen surprise that Alan learned how many of the 
 fishermen of Borosay and Berneray, and even of 
 Barra, had caught a glimpse of the outcast. It 
 was this relative familiarity, indeed, that was at 
 
240 GREEN FIRE 
 
 the root of the fear and aversion which had met 
 him upon his arrival. Almost from the moment 
 he had landed in Borosay, the rumour had spread 
 that he was indeed no other than Donnacha 
 Ban, and that he had chosen this way, now both 
 his father and Alasdair Carmichael were dead, 
 to return to his own place. So like was Alan to 
 the outlaw who had long since disappeared from 
 touch with his fellow-men, that many were con- 
 vinced the two could be no other than one 
 and the same. What puzzled him hardly less 
 was the fact that on the rare occasions when 
 Ynys had consented to speak of what she had 
 seen, the man she described bore no resemblance 
 to himself. From one thing and another, he 
 came at last to the belief that he had really 
 seen Donnacha Ban, his uncle : but that the 
 vision of Ynys 1 mind was born of her imagination, 
 stimulated by all the tragedy and strange vicis- 
 situdes she had known, and wrought by the 
 fantastic tales of Marsail and Morag MacNeill. 
 
 By this time, too, the islanders had come to 
 see that Alan MacAlasdair was certainly not 
 Donnacha Ban. Even the startling likeness no 
 
THE HERDSMAN 241 
 
 longer betrayed them in this way. The ministers 
 and the priests laughed at the whole story, and 
 everywhere discouraged the idea that Donnacha 
 Ban could still be among the living. But for the 
 unfortunate superstition that to meet the Herds- 
 man, whether the lost soul of Donnacha Ban, or 
 indeed the strange phantom of the hills of which 
 the old legends spoke, was to meet inevitable 
 disaster : but for this, the islanders might have 
 been persuaded to make such a search among the 
 caves of Rona as would almost certainly have 
 revealed the presence of any who dwelt therein. 
 
 But, as summer lapsed into autumn, and 
 autumn itself through its golden silences waned 
 into the shadow of the equinox, a quiet happiness 
 came upon both Alan and Ynys. True, she was 
 still wrought by her strange visionary life, though 
 of this she said little or nothing : and, as for him- 
 self, he hoped that with the birth of the child 
 this fantastic dream-life would go. Whoever the 
 mysterious Herdsman was, if he indeed existed at 
 all except in the imaginations of those who spoke 
 of him either as the Buchaille Ban or as the 
 aonaran nan chreag, AJan believed that at last 
 a 
 
242 GREEN FIRE 
 
 he had passed away. None saw him now : and 
 even Morag MacNeill, who had often on moon- 
 light nights caught the sound of a voice chanting 
 among the upper solitudes, admitted that she 
 now heard nothing unusual. 
 
 St. Martin's Summer came at last, and with it 
 all that wonderful dreamlike beauty which bathes 
 the isles in a flood of golden light, and puts upon 
 sea and land a veil as of ineffable mystery. 
 
 One late afternoon, Ynys, returning to Caisteal- 
 Rhona after an unexplained absence of several 
 hours, found Alan sitting at a table. Spread be- 
 fore him were the sheets of one of the strange 
 old Gaelic tales which he had ardently begun to 
 translate. She took up the page which he had 
 just laid down. It was from the Eachdaireachd 
 Challum mhic Cruimein, and the last words that 
 Alan had translated were these : — 
 
 * And when that king had come to the island, he 
 lived there in the shadow of men's eyes : for none 
 saw him by day or by night, and none knew 
 whence he came, or whither he fared : for his feet 
 were shod with silence, and his way with dusk. 
 But men knew that he was there, and all feared 
 
THE HERDSMAN 243 
 
 him. Months, even years, tramped one on the 
 heels of the other, and perhaps the king gave no 
 sign, but one day he would give a sign : and that 
 sign was a laughing that was heard somewhere, 
 be it upon the lonely hills or on the lonely wave, or 
 in the heart of him who heard. And whenever 
 the king laughed, he who heard would Jure erelong 
 from his follows to join that king in the shadow. 
 But sometimes the king laughed only because of 
 vain hopes and wild imaginings, for upon these 
 he lives as well as upon the strange savours of 
 mortality? 
 
 Ynys read the page over and over : and when 
 Alan saw how she brooded upon it he regretted 
 that he had left it for her to see. 
 
 He the more regretted this when he learned 
 that on this very afternoon she had again been 
 among the sea-caves. She would not say what 
 she had seen or heard, if indeed she had heard or 
 seen anything unusual. But that night she 
 woke suddenly, and, taking Alan by the hand, 
 made him promise to go with her on the morrow 
 to the Teampull Mhara. 
 
 In vain he questioned her as to why she asked 
 
244 GREEN FIRE 
 
 this thing. All she would say was that she must 
 go there once again, and with him, for she believed 
 that a Spirit out of heaven had come to reveal to 
 her a wonder. Distressed by what he knew to be 
 a madness, and fearful that it might prove to be 
 no passing fantasy, Alan would fain have per- 
 suaded her against this intention. Even as he 
 spoke, however, he realised that it might be 
 better to accede to her wishes, and above all 
 to be there with her so that it might not be 
 one only who heard or saw the expected revela- 
 tion. 
 
 And it was a strange faring indeed, that which 
 occurred on the morrow. At noon, when the 
 tide was an hour turned in the ebb, they sailed 
 westward from Caisteal-Rhona. It was in silence 
 they made that strange journey together : for, 
 while Alan steered, Ynys lay down in the hollow 
 of the boat, with her head against his knees, 
 and he saw that she slept, or at least lay still 
 with her eyes closed. 
 
 When, at last, they passed the headland, and 
 entered the first of the sea-arcades, she rose and 
 sat beside him. Hauling down the now useless 
 
THE HERDSMAN 245 
 
 sail, he took an oar and, standing at the prow, 
 urged the boat inward along the narrow cor- 
 ridor which led to the huge sea-cave of the 
 Altar. 
 
 In the deep gloom, for even on that day of 
 golden light and beauty the green air of the sea- 
 cave was heavy with shadow, there was a deathly 
 chill. What dull light there was came from the 
 sheen of the green water which lay motionless 
 along the black basaltic ledges. When, at last, 
 the base of the Altar was reached, Alan secured 
 the boat by a rope passed around a projecting 
 spur : and then lay down in the stern beside Ynys. 
 
 'Tell me, dear, what is this thing that you 
 expect to hear or see ? ' 
 
 She looked at him strangely for a while, but 
 though her lips moved she said nothing. 
 
 ' Tell me, dear, 1 he urged again, ' who is it you 
 expect to see or hear ? , 
 
 ' Am BiLchaille Ban? she answered, ' the Herds- 
 man.' 
 
 For a moment he hesitated. Then, taking 
 her hand in his, and raising it to his lips, he 
 whispered in her ear — 
 
246 GREEN FIRE 
 
 ' Dearest, all this is a vain dream. There is no 
 Herdsman upon Rona. If ever there was a man 
 there who lived solitary, if ever, indeed, there 
 was an aonaran nan chreag, he is dead long since. 
 What you have seen and heard has been a prey- 
 ing upon you of wild thoughts. Think no more 
 of this vision. We have both suffered too much, 
 and the knowledge of what is behind us has 
 wrought upon us too hardly. It is a mistake to 
 be here, on Rona, now. Ynys, darling, you and 
 I are young, and we love : let us leave this 
 melancholy isle, these melancholy isles, and go 
 back into the green sunny world wherein we had 
 such joy before : yes, let us even go back to 
 Kerival, anywhere where we may live our life 
 with joy and glad content — but not here, not in 
 these melancholy haunted isles, where our dreams 
 become more real than our life, and life itself, 
 for us at least, the mere shadow of being. Ynys, 
 will you come ? Will you go ? ' 
 
 'All shall be as you will, Alan — afterwards. 
 But first, I must wait here till our child is 
 born, for I have heard that which is a message. 
 And one part of that message concerns you and 
 
THE HERDSMAN 247 
 
 me ; and one concerns others. And that which 
 concerns you and me is that in this way, in 
 this child, to be born here in this place, lies 
 the redemption of the evil by which your father 
 was slain by my father. It is not enough that 
 you and I have forgotten the past; the past 
 remains. What we cannot do, or no man or 
 woman can do, the powers that are beyond the 
 grave can accomplish. Not our love, not even 
 ours, can redeem that crime. But if, born of 
 us, one will come, who will be dowered with 
 our love, and free from the blood-shadow which 
 lies upon us, then all will be well and the evil 
 shall be done with for evermore. But, also, has 
 not the prophet said that one shall be born upon 
 this island who will redeem his oppressed people ? 
 and this prophet, Alan, I have seen and heard. 
 Never have I seen his face aright, for it has ever 
 been in the shadow ; but I have heard his voice, 
 for he has spoken to me, and what he has said 
 is this : that in the fulness of time the child I 
 shall bear will be he of whom men have dreamed 
 in the isles for ages past. Sure, dear, you and 
 I must be believing that thing, since he who tells 
 
248 GREEN FIRE 
 
 it is no mere erring Faidh, but himself an im- 
 mortal spirit. 1 
 
 Alan looked at the speaker in amaze. There 
 could be no question of her absolute sincerity ; 
 for the beautiful face was lit with a strange 
 light, and in her eyes was a proud gleam of 
 conscious sacrifice. That it was all a madness, 
 a fantasy, he knew well. Long ago had Lois 
 de Kerival spoken of the danger that lay for 
 Ynys, she being the inheritor of a strange 
 brooding spirit which belonged to her people. 
 Now, in this remote place, the life of dream 
 and the life of reality had become one; and 
 Ynys was as a drifted ship among unknown seas 
 and mists. 
 
 But on one point he believed he might con- 
 vince her. 
 
 'Why do you speak of the Herdsman as 
 spirit, Ynys? What proof have you of this? 
 If you or I have seen any one at all, be 
 sure it is a mortal man and no spirit ; nay, 
 I know who it must be if any one it is, for 
 throughout the isles men say that Donnacha 
 Ban, the son of the brother of my father, was 
 
THE HERDSMAN 249 
 
 an outlaw here, and has lived long among the 
 caves/ 
 
 ' This man, 1 she said quietly, ' is not Donnacha 
 Ban, but the prophet of whom the people speak. 
 He himself has told me this thing. Yesterday 
 I was here, and he bade me come again. He 
 spoke out of the shadow that is about the Altar, 
 though I saw him not. I asked him if he were 
 Donnacha Ban, and he said no. I asked him 
 if he were Am Faidh, and he said yes ; I asked 
 him if he were indeed an immortal spirit, and 
 herald of that which was to be; and he said, 
 even so ! ' 
 
 For a long while after this, no word was 
 spoken betwixt the twain. The chill of that 
 remote place began to affect Ynys, and she 
 shivered slightly at times. But more she shivered 
 because of the silence which prevailed, and because 
 that he who had promised to be there gave no 
 sign. Sure, she thought, it could not be all a 
 dream ; sure, the Herdsman would come again. 
 
 Then, at last, turning to Alan, she said, ' We 
 must come on the morrow ; for to-day, he is not 
 here. 1 
 
250 GREEN FIRE 
 
 'No, dear, never, never shall we come here 
 again. This is for the last time. Henceforth, 
 we shall dwell here in Rona no more.' 
 
 'You will do this thing for me, Alan, that 
 I ask?' 
 
 ' I will do what you ask, Ynys.' 
 
 'Then take this written word, and leave it 
 upon the top of the great rock there that is 
 called the Altar.' 
 
 With that she placed in his hand a slip of 
 paper whereon she had already written certain 
 words. What they were Alan could not discern 
 in that shadowy light ; but, taking the slip in 
 his hand, he stepped on the black ledges at the 
 base of the Altar, and slowly mounted the pre- 
 cipitous rock. 
 
 Ynys watched him till he became himself a 
 shadow in that darkness. Her heart leaped when 
 suddenly she heard a cry fall to her out of the 
 gloom. 
 
 ' Alan, Alan,' she cried — and a great fear was 
 upon her when no answer came; but at last, 
 with passionate relief, she heard him clambering 
 slowly down the perilous slope of that obscure 
 
THE HERDSMAN 251 
 
 place. When he reached the ledge, he stood 
 still, regarding her. 
 
 6 Why do you not come into the boat, Alan ? 1 
 she asked. 
 
 1 Dear, I have that to tell you which will let 
 you see that I spoke truth. 1 
 
 She looked at him with parted lips, her breath 
 coming and going like that of a caged bird. 
 
 * What is it, Alan ? ' she whispered. 
 
 ' Ynys, when I reached the top of the Altar, 
 and in the dim light that was there, I saw the 
 dead body of a man lying upon the rock. His 
 head was lain back so that the gleam from a 
 crevice in the cliff overhead fell upon it. The 
 man has been dead many hours. He is a man 
 whose hair has been greyed by years and sorrow, 
 but the man is he who is of my blood, he whom 
 I resemble so closely, he that the fishermen call 
 aonaran nan chreag, he that is the Herdsman."* 
 
 Ynys made no reply ; still she looked at him 
 with large wondering eyes. 
 
 'Ynys darling, do you not understand what 
 it is that I say ? This man, that they call the 
 Buchaille Ban — this man whom you believe to 
 
252 GREEN FIRE 
 
 be the Herdsman of the old legend — is no other 
 than Donnacha Ban, he who, years and years 
 ago, slew his brother and has been an exile ever 
 since on this lonely island. How could he, then, 
 a man as I am, though with upon him a worse 
 blood-shadow than lies upon us, how could he 
 tell you aught of what is to be ? What message 
 could he give you that is himself a lost soul ? 
 
 6 Would you be for following a herdsman who 
 could lead you to no fold ? This man is dead 
 Ynys ; and it is well that you brought me here 
 to-day. That is a good thing, and for sure God 
 willed it. Out of this all our new happiness may 
 come. For now we know what is this mysterious 
 shadow that has darkened our lives ever since 
 we came to Rona. Now we have knowledge 
 that it was no mere phantom I saw upon the 
 hillside ; and now also we know that he who 
 told you these strange, wild things of which 
 you speak, was no prophet with a message from 
 the world of the spirit, but a man wrought to 
 madness, a man who for all these years had 
 lived his lonely secretive life upon the hills, or 
 among these caves of the sea. Come, then, 
 
THE HERDSMAN 253 
 
 dear, and let us go hence. Sure, at the last, 
 it is well that we have found this way. Come, 
 Ynys, we will go now and never come here 
 again. ' 
 
 He looked eagerly for her assenting eyes. 
 With pain in his heart, however, he saw that 
 the dream, the strange inexplicable fantasy, had 
 not yet gone out of them. With a sigh, he 
 entered the boat, and took her hand. 
 
 ' Let us go, 1 she said, and that was all. 
 
 Slowly, Alan oared the boat across the shadowy 
 gulf of the cave, along the narrow passage which 
 led therefrom, and out into the pale green gloom 
 of the arched arcade wherein the sight and sound 
 of the sea made a music in his ears. 
 
 But the short November day was already 
 passing to its end. All the sea westward was 
 aflame with gold and crimson light, and in the 
 great dome of the sky a wonderful radiance lifted 
 above the paleness of the clouds whose pinnacled 
 and bastioned heights towered in the south-west. 
 
 A faint wind blew eastwardly ; so, raising the 
 sail, Alan made it fast and then sat down 
 beside Ynys. But she, rising, moved along the 
 
254 GREEN FIRE 
 
 boat to the mast, and leaned there with her 
 face against the setting sun. 
 
 Idly they drifted onward. Deep silence pre- 
 vailed betwixt them ; deep silence was all about 
 them, save for the endless inarticulate murmur 
 of the sea, the splash of low waves against the 
 rocks of Rona, and the sigh of the surf at the 
 base of the basalt precipices. 
 
 And this was their homeward sailing on that 
 day of revelation ; Ynys, with her back against 
 the mast, her face irradiated by the light of 
 the setting sun ; he, steering, with his face in 
 shadow. 
 
 On a night of rain and amid the rumour of 
 tempest, three weeks later, Ynys heard the 
 laughter of the king, when the child, who was 
 to be the bearer of so fair a destiny, lay by 
 her side, white and chill as the foam thrown 
 up for a brief while upon the rocks by the 
 unheeding sea. 
 
BOOK THIRD 
 THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD 
 
THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD 
 
 When, once more, the exquisite mystery of 
 Spring came upon the world, there was a not less 
 wonderful rebirth in the heart of Ynys. 
 
 With the coming of that child upon whom 
 such high hopes had been set — its birth, still and 
 quiet as a snowdrop fallen before an icy wind 
 upon the snow which nurtured it — all the fear of 
 a mysterious Nemesis, because of her union with 
 Alan, despite the shadow of tragic crime which 
 made that union ominous of evil destiny ; all the 
 vague forebodings which had possessed her ever 
 since she left Kerival; and, at the last, all the 
 mystic elation with which her mind had become 
 a winged and wandering spirit, passed from 
 her. 
 
 The gloom of that northern winter was tonic 
 to them both. As soon as her weakness was 
 
258 GREEN FIRE 
 
 past, and once more she was able to go about 
 with Alan, her old joyousness returned. In 
 her eyes it was almost as though the islanders 
 shared her recovered happiness. For one thing 
 they no more avoided her and Alan. With the 
 death of the man who had so long sustained 
 a mysterious existence upon Rona, their super- 
 stitious aversion went : they ceased to speak 
 of Am Buchaille Ban; and, whether Donacha 
 Ban had found on Rona one of the hidden ways 
 to heaven, or had only dallied upon one of the 
 byways to hell, it was commonly held that he 
 had paid his death-eric by his lonely and even 
 appalling life of unredeemed solitude. Now 
 that there was no longer any possibility of con- 
 fusion between the outcast who had come to his 
 tragic end among the sea-caves of Rona, and his 
 kinsman who bore to him so extraordinary a 
 resemblance, a deep sense of the injustice that 
 had been done to Alan Carmichael prevailed 
 among the islanders. In many ways they showed 
 their regret; but most satisfactorily, so far as 
 Alan was concerned, by taking him as one of 
 themselves, as a man no longer under the shadow 
 
THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD 259 
 
 of doom or in any way linked to a disastrous 
 fate. 
 
 True, there were still some of the islefolk on 
 Borosay and Barra who maintained that the man 
 who had been found in the sea-cave, whether 
 Donacha Ban or some other, had nothing to do 
 with the mysterious herdsman, whose advent, 
 indeed, had long been anticipated by a section of 
 the older inhabitants. It was only seven years 
 since Murdo Macphail, better known as Murdo- 
 Bronnach-na-mhara, Brown Murdoch of the Sea, 
 from his habit of preaching to the islanders from 
 where he stood waist-deep in the water, had 
 prophesied that the Herdsman who was Shepherd 
 of Israel would indeed come again, and that 
 within seven years. And had he not added that 
 if the Fair Lonely One were not accepted of the 
 people, there would be deep sorrow for one and 
 all, and a bitter wrong upon all the isles of the 
 west ? 
 
 These murmurers now shook their heads, and 
 whispered often. Of a truth, they said, the Herds- 
 man was come as foretold, and Alan Carmichael 
 was blind indeed not to see that Ynys, his wife, 
 
260 GREEN FIRE 
 
 had received a vision, and, because of her silence, 
 been punished in the death of her first-born. 
 
 But with the white growth of winter the 
 pleasant, familiar intercourse that everywhere 
 prevailed wrought finally against the last thread- 
 bare fabric of superstition. Before the glow of 
 the peats the sadness and gloom slowly dissi- 
 pated. It was a new delight to both Alan and 
 Ynys to find that the islanders could be so genial 
 and almost gay, with a love of laughter and 
 music and grotesque humour which even in the 
 blithe little fishing haven of Ploumaliou they had 
 never seen surpassed. 
 
 The cold months passed for them in a quiet 
 content. That could not be happiness upon 
 which was the shadow of so much pain : but 
 there was something akin to it in the sweet 
 serenity which came like calm after storm. 
 
 Possibly they might have been content to re- 
 main in Rona ; to find in the island their interest 
 and happiness. Ynys, indeed, often longed to 
 leave the place where she had been so sadly dis- 
 illusioned : and yet she did not urge that the 
 home at Caisteal-Rhona should be broken up. 
 
THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD 261 
 
 While they were still in this state of quiet sus- 
 pense, news came that affected them strangely. 
 
 They had had no word from Kerival since they 
 left. But one windy March day a boat from 
 Borosay put into the haven with letters from 
 Alan's agents in Edinburgh. Among them was 
 one from the Abbe Caesar de la Bruyere, from 
 Kerloek. From this, Alan learned strange news. 
 
 On the very day that he and Ynys had left 
 Kerival, Annaik had disappeared. None knew 
 where she had gone. At first it was thought 
 that Judik Kerbastiou had something to do with 
 her absence, but two days after she had gone he 
 was again at Kerival. The house was a place of 
 anarchy. No one knew whom to obey, what to 
 do. With the Marquise Lois in her grave, with 
 both Ynys and Annaik mysteriously absent, and 
 apparently with no intention to return, and with 
 Tristran the Silent more morosely taciturn than 
 his wont and more than ever an invalid, with 
 all this it was difficult for those in authority 
 to exact the habitual duties. But in addition 
 to this there were the imperious claims of Judik 
 
262 GREEN FIRE 
 
 Kerbastiou, emphasised by his refusal to be ad- 
 dressed by any other name than the Sieur Jud 
 de Kerival. 
 
 When, suddenly, and while quietly dictating a 
 letter, the Marquis Tristran died, it seemed at 
 last as though Judik's triumph had come. For 
 a brief while he was even addressed as Monsieur 
 le Marquis. But on the noon following that day 
 he had a rude awakening. A notary from Plou- 
 maliou arrived with the family lawyers, and 
 produced a written and signed confession on the 
 part of the woman whom he had called mother 
 that he was not her child at all, that her own 
 child was dead, and that Kerbastiou was really a 
 forest foundling. As if this were not enough, 
 the notary also proved, even to the conviction of 
 Judik, that the written marriage-testimony from 
 the parish books was an impudent forgery. 
 
 So the man who had made so abrupt and 
 dramatic an appearance on the threshold of 
 Kerival had, in the very moment of his triumph, 
 to retreat once more to his obscurity as a home- 
 less woodlander. 
 
 The sole heirs now were Annaik and Ynys, 
 
THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD 263 
 
 but of neither was anything known. The 
 difficulty was partially solved by the abrupt 
 appearance of Annaik on the day of the second 
 conclave. 
 
 For a time thereafter all went well at Kerival. 
 Then rumour began to spread mysterious 
 whispers about the lady Annaik. She would see 
 none of her neighbours, whether from far or 
 near, and even the Sieur de Morvan and his kith 
 or kin were denied. Then, too, she disappeared 
 for days at a time. Some thought she went to 
 Ploumaliou or Kerloek, some that she had gone 
 as far away as Rennes or St. Brieuc, and a few 
 even imagined the remote Paris to be her goal. 
 None dreamed that she had gone no further than 
 the forest of Kerival. 
 
 But, as the autumn waned, rumours became 
 more explicit. Strange things were said of 
 Annaik de Kerival. At last the anxious Cure of 
 Ploumaliou took it upon himself to assure all 
 who spoke to him about the lady of Kerival 
 that he had good reason to believe she was 
 privately married. This at least drew some of 
 the poison out of the gossip which had arisen. 
 
264 GREEN FIRE 
 
 Then a day came when the lady Annaik dis- 
 missed the servants at Kerival, and left none 
 in the house save an old gardener and his wife. 
 She was going away for a time, she said. She 
 went, and from that day was not seen again. 
 
 Then came, in the Abbe Caesar de la Bruyere's 
 letter, the strangest part of the mystery. 
 
 Annaik, ever since the departure of Alan and 
 Ynys, had been living the forest life. All her 
 passionate sylvan and barbaric instincts had been 
 suddenly aroused. For the green woods and the 
 forest ways she suffered an intolerable nostalgia. 
 But over and above this, was another reason. It 
 seemed, said the Abbe Caesar, that she must 
 have returned the rude love of Judik Kerbastiou. 
 However this might be, she lived with him for 
 days at a time, and he himself had a copy of their 
 marriage-certificate made out at a registrar's in a 
 remote little hill-town in the Montagnes Noires. 
 
 This union with the morose and strange Judik 
 Kerbastiou had not been known to any of the 
 peasants until her trouble came to her. When 
 the day was near she did not return to Kerival, 
 but kept to the gypsy-tent which she shared with 
 
THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD 265 
 
 Judik. After the birth of the child, every one 
 knew, and every one marvelled. It was a mad- 
 ness: that was what all said, from Kerloek to 
 Ploumaliou. 
 
 But neither the union nor the child brought 
 happiness to these twain, so much at one in their 
 woodland life, so hopelessly alien in all else. 
 One day a man named Iouenn Kerbac'h, passing 
 by the tent where Judik and Annaik had taken 
 shelter from a violent thunderstorm, overheard 
 a savage upbraiding on the part of Kerbastiou. 
 Annaik was his wife, it was true — so he cried — 
 but a wife who had in nothing short of madness 
 renounced everything, and now would claim 
 nothing of her own nor allow him to claim 
 aught : a wife whom he loved with another mad- 
 ness, and yet hated because she was so hopelessly 
 remote from himself: a wife who had borne a 
 child, but a child that had nothing of the gypsy 
 eyes and swarthy darkness of Judik Kerbastiou, 
 but was fair, and with skin as white and eyes as 
 blue as those of Alan de Kerival. 
 
 It was this, and the terrible words that were 
 said, which made Iouenn Kerbac'h hurry onward, 
 
266 GREEN FIRE 
 
 dreading to listen further. Yet nothing that 
 he overheard gave him so strange a fear as the 
 laugh with which Annaik de Kerival greeted a 
 savage screaming threat of death, hurled at her 
 because of her silence after the taunting accusa- 
 tion he had made . . . had made, and denied her 
 to refute. 
 
 None heard or saw Annaik Kerbastiou after 
 that day, till the night of the evening when 
 Judik came into Haut-Kerloek, and went straight 
 to Jehan Rusgol the Maire. 
 
 When asked what he had come for, he had 
 replied simply, i The woman Annaik is dead. 1 
 It was commonly thought that he had killed her, 
 but there was no evidence of this, and the end of 
 the inevitable legal procedure was the acquittal 
 of the woodlander. From that day the man was 
 rarely seen of his fellows, and even then, for the 
 most part, only by charcoal-burners and others 
 who had forest-business. A few peasants knew 
 where his hut was, and now and again called to 
 speak with him, or to drink a cup of cider ; but 
 oftener than not he was absent, and always with 
 the child. The boy had survived his mother's 
 
THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD 267 
 
 death, and in some strange way had suddenly 
 become so dear to Judik Kerbastiou that the two 
 were inseparable. v 
 
 This, then, was the tidings which startled 
 Alan and Ynys out of their remote quiescence. 
 
 The unexpected news, coupled with the urgent 
 request that both should return to Kerival, if only 
 for a brief while, so as to prevent the property 
 falling into absolute ruin, came as a whip upon 
 Alan's mind. To all he said, Ynys agreed, and was 
 even glad to leave Rona and return to Brittany. 
 
 So it was that, with the first days of April, 
 they bade farewell to Ian and his sister, whom 
 they left at Caisteal-Rhona, which was henceforth 
 to be their home, and to all upon the island, and 
 set forth in a fishing smack for Borosay. 
 
 It was not till the last of the precipices of 
 Rona was lost to view behind the south headland 
 of Borosay that Ynys clearly realised the deep 
 gladness with which she left the lonely Isle of 
 the Caves. That it would have been impossible 
 for her to live there long she was now well 
 assured; and for Alan, too, the life was not 
 
268 GREEN FIRE 
 
 suitable. For the north, and for the islands, they 
 would ever have a deep feeling almost sacred in 
 its intensity; but all that had happened made 
 living there a thing difficult and painful for 
 them; and, moreover, each, though Ynys most, 
 missed that green woodland beauty, the cease- 
 less forest charm, which made the very memory 
 of Kerival so fragrant. 
 
 They went away, then, not as travellers who 
 fare far with no thought of return, but rather 
 as pilgrims returning homeward from a shrine 
 sacred to them by profound and intimate associa- 
 tions. 
 
 That was indeed for them a strange home- 
 going. From the first there was something 
 dreamlike, unreal, about that southward flight; 
 in the long sail across Hebrid seas, calm as glass 
 until the south headlands of Mull were passed, 
 and then storm-swept; in the rapid journey 
 across Scotland and through England ; and in 
 the re-crossing of that narrow sea which had 
 once seemed to them a gulf of ultimate division. 
 
 But when once more they saw the grotesque 
 bulbous spire of Ploumaliou rising above the 
 
THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD 269 
 
 sand-dunes, by which, from St. Malo, they 
 approached the dear familiar country, all this 
 uncertainty went from them. With light hearts 
 they realised it was indeed true, that they were 
 free at last of a life for which they were now 
 unfitted, and that the lost threads in the maze 
 had been found. 
 
 By their own wish the home-coming was so 
 private that none knew of it save the doctor, the 
 cure, the lawyer who accompanied them from 
 Ploumaliou, and the old gardener and his wife. 
 As they neared the chateau from the north, 
 Alan and Ynys alighted from the dishevelled 
 carriage, which was the sole vehicle of which 
 Ploumaliou could boast. M. Auriol could drive 
 on alone : for themselves, they chose to reach 
 their home by the dunes and scattered pines, 
 and thence by the yew-close behind the manor- 
 house. 
 
 The day was windless, and of a serene beauty. 
 Ever since noon the few clouds, suspensive in 
 the azure flood like islets of snow, had waned, 
 till they were faint and light as blown swans- 
 down, then filmy as vapour lifted against the 
 
270 GREEN FIRE 
 
 sun, and at last were no more visible, there had 
 been the same unfathomable depths of azure, 
 through which the tides of light imperceptibly 
 ebbed from the zenith. The sea, too, was of a 
 vivid though motionless blue, save where lumin- 
 ous with a white sheen, or wrought with violet 
 shadows and straits of amethyst. Upon the 
 land lay a golden peace. A richer glow in- 
 volved the dunes, where the pine-shadows cast 
 long motionless blue shapes. As, hand in hand, 
 Ynys and Alan moved athwart the pine-glade, 
 whence they could pass at once either westward 
 into the cypress-alley or eastward through the 
 yew-close, they stopped instinctively. Beyond 
 them rose the chimneys and gables of the 
 House of Kerival, strangely still and remote for 
 all their familiar look. What a brief while ago 
 it seemed since he and she had walked under 
 these pines, wrought by the first ecstasy of their 
 virginal love ! Then those who now lay quiet 
 in the darkness of the earth were alive : Lois de 
 Kerival, with her repressed passionate heart still 
 at last; the Marquis Tristran, with the young 
 grass growing soft and green over his bitter- 
 
THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD 271 
 
 ness ; Alasdair Carmichael, with the echo of the 
 island waves stilled under the quiet bells of the 
 little church which guarded the graveyard of St. 
 Blaise ; and Annaik, poor lost waif of beautiful 
 womanhood, submerged for ever in the green 
 woods she loved so well, and sleeping so sound a 
 sleep at last in an unmarked hollow beneath an 
 ancient tree in some obscure glade or alley. 
 
 A shadow was in Alan's eyes, a deeper shadow 
 than that caused by thought of the dead, who lay 
 heedless and listless at once so near and yet such 
 depths away — a deeper shadow than that cast by 
 memory of the crime which overlay the past. 
 
 As his eyes wandered to the cypress-alley, his 
 heart knew again a pain almost beyond endur- 
 ance : a pain that only the peace of Rona had 
 translated into a strong acquiescence in the 
 irrevocable past, a pain become less haunting 
 under the stress of all which had happened in 
 connection with the Herdsman, till it knew a 
 bitter resurrection when Alan came to read 
 of the tragic fate of the woman who had loved 
 him. 
 
 Through some wayward impulse, Ynys abruptly 
 
272 GREEN FIRE 
 
 asked him to go with her through the cypress- 
 alley, so that they should approach the chateau 
 from the forest. 
 
 Silently, and with downcast eyes, he walked by 
 her side, his hand still in hers. But his thoughts 
 were with the dead woman, on the bitter hazard 
 of love, and on what lay, for ever secret, between 
 Annaik and himself. And as he communed with 
 himself, in an austere pain of remembrance, he 
 came to see more and more clearly that in some 
 strange way the Herdsman-episode, with all 
 involved therein, was no arbitrary chance in the 
 maze of life, but a definite working out of des- 
 tiny. None could ever know what Annaik had 
 foretold, had known, on that terrible night when 
 the silence of the moonlit peace was continuously 
 rent by the savage screams of the peacocks ; nor 
 could any other than himself discern, against the 
 dark tapestries of what veiled his inner life, the 
 weaving of an inextricable web. 
 
 It was difficult for him to believe that she was 
 dead — Annaik, who had always been so radiantly, 
 superbly alive. Now there was dust upon that 
 wonderful bronze hair, darkness upon those lam- 
 
THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD 273 
 
 bent eyes, no swift pulse beating in the red tide 
 in the veins, a frost against the heart. What a 
 burden it had carried, poor heart ! O Annaik, 
 Annaik, he muttered below his breath, what a 
 hard wayfaring because of a passion crucified 
 upon the bitter tree of despair; what a fierce, 
 silent, unwavering tyranny over the rebellious 
 voices crying unceasingly from every nerve, or 
 swept this way and that on every stormy tide of 
 blood ! 
 
 That Annaik who loved the forest so passing 
 well, and in whom the green fire of life flamed 
 consumingly, should no longer be alive to rejoice 
 in the glory of Spring, now once again every- 
 where involving the brown earth and the purple 
 branches, was almost unrealisable. To walk 
 in that cypress-alley once more, to cross that 
 open glade with its single hawthorn, to move 
 in the dark -green shadow of that yew-close, to do 
 this and remember all that Annaik had suffered, 
 and that now she lay quiet and beyond all pain 
 or joy to touch her, was to Alan a thought 
 almost too poignant to be borne. 
 
 It was with an effort he answered Ynys when 
 
274 GREEN FIRE 
 
 she spoke, and it was in silence that they 
 entered the house which was now their home, 
 and where — years ago, as it seemed — they had 
 been young and happy. 
 
 But that night he sat alone for a time in the 
 little room in the tower which rose from the east 
 wing of Kerival — the room he had fitted up as an 
 observatory, similar on a smaller scale to that in 
 the Tour de Tile, where he had so deeply studied 
 the mystery of the starry world. Here he had 
 dreamed many dreams, and here he dreamed yet 
 another. 
 
 For out of his thoughts about Annaik and 
 Ynys arose a fuller, a deeper conception of 
 womanhood. How well he remembered a legend 
 that Ynys had told him on Rona : a legend of 
 a fair spirit which goes to and fro upon the 
 world, the Weaver of Tears. He loves the path- 
 ways of sorrow. His voice is low and sweet, with 
 a sound like the bubbling of waters in that fount 
 whence the rainbows rise. His eyes are in quiet 
 places, and in the dumb pain of animals as in 
 the agony of the human brain : but most he is 
 found, oftenest are the dewy traces of his feet, 
 in the heart of woman. 
 
THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD 275 
 
 Tears, tears : they are not the saltest tears 
 which are on the lids of those who weep. Fierce 
 tears there are, hot founts of pain in the mind 
 of many a man, that are never shed, but slowly 
 crystallise in furrows on brow and face, and in 
 deep weariness in the eyes : fierce tears, unquench- 
 able, in the heart of many a woman, whose brave 
 eyes look fearlessly at life, whose dauntless 
 courage goes forth daily to die but never to be 
 vanquished. 
 
 In truth the Weaver of Tears abides in the 
 heart of woman. O Mother of Pity, of Love, 
 of deep Compassion : with thee it is to yearn for 
 ever for the ideal human, to bring the spiritual 
 love into fusion with human desire, endlessly to 
 strive, endlessly to fail, always to hope in spite 
 of disillusion, to love unswervingly against all 
 baffling and misunderstanding, and even forget- 
 fulness ! O Woman, whose eyes are always 
 stretched out to her erring children, whose 
 heart is big enough to cover all the little chil- 
 dren in the world, and suffer with their sufferings, 
 and joy with their joys : Woman, whose other 
 divine names are Strength and Patience, who is 
 
276 GREEN FIRE 
 
 no girl, no virgin, because she has drunk too 
 deeply of the fount of Life to be very young or 
 very joyful. Upon her lips is the shadowy kiss 
 of death : in her eyes is the shadow of birth. 
 She is the veiled interpreter of the two mysteries. 
 Yet what joyousness like hers, when she wills : 
 because of her unwavering hope, her inexhaustible 
 fount of love ? 
 
 So it was that just as Alan had long recognised 
 as a deep truth, how the spiritual nature of man 
 has been revealed to humanity in many divine 
 incarnations, so he had come to believe that the 
 spiritual nature of woman has been revealed in 
 the many Marys, sisters of the Beloved, who have 
 had the keys of the soul and the heart in their 
 unconscious keeping. In this exquisite truth, 
 he knew a fresh and vivid hope. Was it all a 
 dream that Ynys had dreamed, far away among 
 the sea-arcades of Rona ? Had the Herdsman, 
 the Shepherd of Souls, indeed revealed to her 
 that a child was to be born who would be one of 
 the Redeemers of the world ? A Woman-Saviour, 
 who would come near to all of us, because in her 
 heart would be the blind tears of the child, and 
 
THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD 277 
 
 the bitter tears of the man, and the patient tears 
 of the woman : who would be the Compassionate 
 One, with no end or aim but compassion — with 
 no doctrine to teach, no way to show, but only 
 deep, wonderful, beautiful, inalienable, unquench- 
 able compassion ? 
 
 For in truth there is the divine eternal femi- 
 nine counterpart to the divine eternal male, 
 and both are needed to explain the mystery of 
 the dual spirit within us — the mystery of the 
 two in one, so infinitely stranger and more 
 wonderful than that triune life which the blind 
 teachers of the blind have made a rock of stum- 
 bling and offence out of a truth clear and obvious 
 as noon. — 
 
 We speak of Mother Nature, but we do not 
 discern the living truth behind our words. How 
 few of us have the vision of this great brooding 
 Mother, whose garment is the earth and sea, 
 whose head is pillowed among the stars : she 
 who, with death and sleep as her familiar shapes, 
 soothes and rests all the weariness of the world, 
 from the waning leaf to the beating pulse, from 
 the brief span of a human heart to the furrowing 
 
278 GREEN FIRE 
 
 of granite brows by the uninterrupted sun, the 
 hounds of rain and wind, and the untrammelled 
 airs of heaven. 
 
 Not cruel, relentless, impotently anarchic, 
 chaotically potent, this Mater Genetrix. We 
 see her thus, who are flying threads in the loom 
 she weaves. But she is patient, abiding, certain, 
 inviolate, and silent ever. It is only when we 
 come to this vision of her whom we call Isis, or 
 Hera, or Orchil, or one of a hundred other names, 
 our unknown Earth-Mother, that men and women 
 will know each other aright, and go hand in 
 hand along the road of life without striving to 
 crush, to subdue, to usurp, to retaliate, to 
 separate. 
 
 Ah, fair vision of humanity to come : man and 
 woman side by side, sweet, serene, true, simple, 
 natural, fulfilling earth's and heaven's behests, 
 unashamed, unsophisticated, unaffected, each to 
 each and for each, children of one mother, inheri- 
 tors of a like destiny, and, at the last, artificers 
 of an equal fate. 
 
 Pondering thus, Alan rose, and looked out into 
 the night. In that great stillness, wherein the 
 
THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD 279 
 
 moonlight lay like the visible fragrance of the 
 earth, he gazed long and intently. How shadowy, 
 now, were those lives that had so lately palpi- 
 tated in this very place : how strange their silence, 
 their incommunicable knowledge, their fathomless 
 peace ! 
 
 Was it all lost . . . the long endurance of 
 pain, the pangs of sorrow ? If so, what was the 
 lesson of life ? Surely to live with sweet serenity 
 and gladness, content against the inevitable hour. 
 There is solace of a kind in the idea of a common 
 end, of that terrible processional march of life 
 wherein the myriad is momentary, and the 
 immeasurable is but a passing shadow. But, 
 alas, it is only solace of a kind : for what heart 
 that has beat to the pulse of love can relinquish 
 the sweet dream of life, and what coronal can 
 philosophy put upon the brows of youth in place 
 of eternity ? 
 
 No, no : of this he felt sure. In the Beauty of 
 the World lies the ultimate redemption of our 
 mortality. When we shall become at one with 
 nature in a sense profounder even than the 
 poetic imaginings of most of us, we shall under- 
 
280 GREEN FIRE 
 
 stand what now we fail to discern. The arro- 
 gance of those who would have the stars as 
 candles for our night, and the universe as a 
 pleasaunce for our thought, will be as impos- 
 sible as their blind fatuity who say we are of 
 dust, briefly vitalised, that shall be dust again, 
 with no fragrance saved from the rude bank- 
 ruptcy of life, no beauty raised up against the 
 sun to bloom anew. 
 
 It is no idle dream, this : no idle dream that 
 we are a perishing clan among the sons of God, 
 because of this slow waning of our joy, of our 
 
 passionate delight, in the Beauty of the WorJcL * 
 
 We have been unable to look out upon the 
 shining of our star, for the vision overcomes us-, 
 and we have used veils which we call 'scenery,' 
 1 picturesqueness,"* and the like — poor barren 
 words that are so voiceless and remote before the 
 rustle of leaves and the lap of water, before the 
 ancient music of the wind, and all the sovran 
 eloquence of the tides of light. But a day may 
 come — nay, shall surely come — when indeed the 
 poor and the humble shall inherit the earth: 
 they who have not made a league with temporal 
 evils and out of whose heart shall arise the 
 
THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD 281 
 
 deep longing, that shall become universal, of the 
 renewal of youth. 
 
 Often, in the days which followed their return 
 to Kerival, Alan and Ynys talked of these hopes 
 and fears. And, gradually, out of the beauty of 
 the Spring, out of the intensity of the green fire 
 of life which everywhere flamed in the brown 
 earth, on the hills, in the waters, in the heart and 
 brain of man, in the whole living, breathing 
 world, was born of them a new joy. They were 
 as the prince and princess of the fairy tales, for 
 whom everything was wonderful. Hand in hand 
 they entered into the kingdom of youth. It was 
 theirs, thenceforth : and all the joy of the world. 
 
 To live, and love, and be full of a deep joy, a 
 glad content, a supporting hope ! What destiny 
 among the stars fairer than this ? 
 
 They would be harbingers of joy. That was 
 what they said, one to another. They would be 
 so glad with sweet life, that others would rejoice: 
 out of their strength they would strengthen, out 
 of their joy they would gladden, out of their 
 peace they would comfort, out of their know- 
 ledge they would be compassionate. 
 
282 GREEN FIRE 
 
 Nor was their dream an unfulfilled vision. As 
 the weeks slipped into months, and the months 
 lapsed into years, Alan and Ynys realised all 
 it is possible for man and woman to know 
 of happiness. Happiness, duties, claims, held 
 them to Kerival : but there they lived in fair 
 comradeship with their fellows, with the green 
 forest, with all that nature had to give them for 
 their delight through wind and wave, through 
 shadow and shine, through changing seasons and 
 the exquisite hazard of every passing hour. 
 
 To them both, too, came the added joy which 
 they feared had been forfeited at Rona. When 
 Ynys felt the child's hand on her breast, she was 
 as one transformed by a light out of heaven. 
 Alan, looking at mother and child, understood, 
 with all his passion for the intimate wonder and 
 mystery of nature, the deeper truth in the words 
 of one of the greatest of men . . . ' The Souls of 
 the Living are the Beauty of the World.' 
 
 That, sometimes, a shadow fell was inevitable. 
 None ever so dusked the sunway of Alan's mind 
 as when, remote in the forest of Kerival, he came 
 upon the unkempt figure of Judik Kerbastiou, 
 often carrying upon his shoulder a little child, 
 
THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD 283 
 
 whose happy laughter was sweet to hear, in whose 
 tawny hair was a light such as had gleamed in 
 Annaik's, and whose eyes were blue as the north 
 sea's and as Alan's were. 
 
 Often, too, alone in his observatory, where 
 he was wont to spend much of his time, Alan 
 knew that strange nostalgia of the mind for impos- 
 sible things. Then, wrought for a while from 
 his vision of green life, and flamed by another 
 green fire than that born of the earth, he dreamed 
 his dream. With him, the peopled solitude of 
 night was a concourse of confirming voices. He 
 did not dread the silence of the stars, the cold 
 remoteness of the stellar fire. 
 
 In that other watch-tower in Paris, where he 
 had spent the best hours of his youth, he had 
 loved that nightly watch of the constellations. 
 Now, as then, in the pulse of the planets he found 
 assurances which faith had not given him. In 
 the vast majestic order of that nocturnal march, 
 that diurnal retreat, he had learned the law of 
 the whirling leaf and the falling star, of the slow 
 aeon-delayed comet and of the slower wane of 
 solar fires. Looking with visionary eyes into that 
 
284 GREEN FIRE 
 
 congregation of stars, he realised, not the little- 
 ness of the human dream but its divine impulsion. 
 It was only when, after long vigils into the 
 quietudes of night, he turned his gaze from the 
 palaces of the unknown, and thought of the 
 baffled fretful swarming in the cities of men, 
 that his soul rose in revolt against the sub- 
 lime ineptitude of man's spiritual leaguer against 
 destiny. 
 
 Destiny — ' An Dan , — it was a word familiar to 
 him since childhood, when first he had heard it 
 on the lips of old Ian Macdonald. And once, on 
 the eve of the Feast of Paschal, when Alan had 
 asked Daniel Dare what was the word which the 
 stars spelled from zenith to nadir, the astronomer 
 had turned and answered simply, * C'est le Destin.' 
 
 But Alan was of the few to whom this talis- 
 manic word opens lofty perspectives, even while 
 it obscures those paltry vistas which we deem 
 unending and dignify with vain hopes and void 
 immortalities. 
 
Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty 
 at the Edinburgh University Press 
 
OPINIONS OF THE PRESS 
 
 ON THE WRITINGS OP 
 
 FIONA MACLEOD 
 
 ' Not beauty alone, but that element of strangeness in beauty 
 which Mr. Pater rightly discerned as the inmost spirit of romantic 
 art — it is this which gives to Miss Macleod's work its peculiar 
 aesthetic charm. But apart from and beyond all those qualities 
 which one calls artistic, there is a poignant human cry, as 
 of a voice with tears in it, speaking from out a gloaming which 
 never lightens to day, which will compel and hold the hearing of 
 many who to the claims of art as such are wholly or largely 
 unresponsive. If I were to ask myself what were the external 
 objects of contemplation which have most strongly influenced Miss 
 Macleod, I should say, first, wild nature, felt not as a mere show 
 of beauty or of wonder, but as a presence and a power ; second, 
 the tragic pathos always cunningly interwoven with the fabric of 
 human passion and human fate ; and, third — though this, indeed, 
 is hardly distinct from the second— the strange, barbaric element, 
 which sometimes breaks up even the thick crust of an elaborated 
 civilisation, though it can naturally be observed most steadily and 
 studied most closely among the unsophisticated, simple, elemental 
 human beings who live not merely with Nature, but, so to speak, 
 in her, and feel the stirrings of a conscious kinship. . . . The Gaelic 
 nature is in some ways markedly un-Hellenic, and yet I think we 
 have to go back to Greek tragedy for a rendering of the irresistible 
 dominance of fate equal in imaginative jimpressiveness to some 
 of her celebrations of the Western Gael's persistently fatalistic 
 outlook upon human life.' — James Ashcroft Noble in ' The New 
 Age: 
 
OPINIONS OF THE PRESS 
 
 ' Recently a new element has been introduced into Scottish 
 fiction, which bids fair to assume proportions of considerable im- 
 portance. A novelist of the romantic order has arisen, who gives 
 promise of making a permanent mark not only in Highland but in 
 English literature. Miss Fiona Macleod has given to the world 
 four works which, one may well believe, have laid the foundation 
 of a great reputation.' — Mr. William C. Mackenzie in ' The High- 
 land News' 
 
 ' The most remarkable figure in the Scottish Celtic Renascence, 
 Miss Fiona Macleod, has now set three books before the public, 
 and it is time to appraise her seriously.' — From an article on Fiona 
 Macleod and the Celtic Renascence, in * The Irish Independent. ' 
 
 ' It is impossible to read her and not to feel that some magic in 
 her touch has made the sun seem brighter, the grass greener, the 
 world more wonderful.' — Mr. George Cotterell in an article in 
 ' The Academy' 
 
 'Miss Fiona Macleod's second book, The Mountain Lovers, 
 fully justifies the opinions already formed of her exquisite handi- 
 craft. . . . Her vocabulary, in particular, is astonishing in its 
 range, its richness, and its magic : she seems to employ every 
 beautiful word in the English language with instinctive grace and 
 sense of fitness.' — Mr. Grant Allen in an article entitled ' The 
 Fine Flower of Celticism' 
 
 'The fascination of " atmosphere " in all Miss Macleod's work 
 is extraordinary.' — Mr. H. D. Traill in the ' Graphic' 
 
 ' For sheer originality, other qualities apart, her tales are as 
 remarkable, perhaps, as anything we have had of the kind since 
 Mr. Kipling appeared. . . . Their local colour, their idiom, their 
 whole method, combine to produce an effect which may be un- 
 accustomed, but is therefore the more irresistible. They provide 
 as original an entertainment as we are likely to find in this 
 lingering century, and they suggest a new romance among the 
 potential things of the century to come.' — The Academy- 
 
 ' Of the products of what has been called the Celtic Renascence, 
 The Sin-Eater and its companion stories seem to us the most 
 remarkable. They are of imagination and a certain terrible 
 beauty all compact.' — From an article in * The Daily Chronicle'' 
 on * The Gaelic Glamour.' 
 
OPINIONS OF THE PRESS 
 
 THE WASHER OF THE FORD: 
 
 AND OTHER LEGENDARY MORALITIES AND TALES 
 
 ' In power of treatment, in the fierce imaginative realism of some 
 of them, and the profound depth of sadness or bitterness in others, 
 her earlier writings bore fresh witness to the genius which by that 
 time most of her critics recognised in Miss Macleod's work. But 
 some of us still looked for a fuller revelation . . . and this fuller 
 revelation we have in the present volume.' — The Academy. 
 
 ' Miss Macleod's new book persuades one more than ever that 
 she is the possessor of that rare and precious thing, genius. . . . 
 This new work has energy, passion, beauty, and sweetness.' — The 
 
 National Observer. 
 
 ' Few are the thankful days when one finds an arresting new 
 book that has all the force and circumstance and vitality of insight, 
 of art ; that is, an inspired voice, not an intellectual accident ; a 
 medium for a little gracious lore from Being's secret places ; a 
 vehicle for a spirit that is infused and quickened with some sense of 
 subsided waters in which eternal verities are at anchor. The sense 
 of all this, and of certain other magical qualities, we have come to 
 expect in the work of that singularly gifted young writer, Miss 
 Fiona Macleod, whose progress will give the material for perhaps 
 the most charming chapter in the story of the closing century's 
 literature.'— The Sun. 
 
 ' " There is no mystery in them, or anywhere, except the eternal 
 mystery of beauty" — and Miss Macleod certainly possesses the 
 master-key to the heart of that mystery. We are moved by the 
 same imaginative vision, the same passionate sympathy with the 
 elemental forces of nature, and the imperishable primeval human 
 passions.' — The Daily Chronicle. 
 
 ' Literary watchers for signs on the horizon may well acclaim 
 these stories, and call them, if they will, the Celtic Renascence — 
 though here is indeed a renascence, as all romance is a renascence : 
 — a less ambitious and perhaps truer philosophy will be content to 
 say that these are eternal elements of poetry, and the name of the 
 present avatar is not a concatenation of abstract terms, but simply 
 Miss Fiona Macleod.'— The Manchester Guardian. 
 
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