Sir Quixote of the Moors

nd the fire and fury of swift encounter, the decay of summer, the moist, rotting air, and the first chill preludes of winter are hard to stand. This may be true of our own autumn days

the stream, turgid with past rains, tearing through the meadows. The sun rose in the morning in a blaze of gold and crimson; the days were temperately warm, the afternoons bright, and the

call me to meals. But now the pain of the departure seemed to have gone, and though still quiet as ever, there was no melancholy in her air; but with a certain cheerful gravity she passed in and out in my sight. At first I had

lit, and the fire burned, 'twas hard to find some method to make the hours go by. I am not a man easily moved, as I have said; and yet I took shame to myself to think of the minister and Master Henry in the cold bogs, and Anne and myself before a great blaze.

, listening as no comrade by the tavern-board ever listened; and though, for the sake of decency, I was obliged to leave out many of the more diverting, yet I flatter myself I won her interest and made the time less dreary. I ranged over all my own experience and the memory of those tales which I had heard from others-and those who know anything of me know that that is not small. I told her of exploits in the Indies and Spain, in Germany and the

The talking fell mostly to my lot, for she had a great habit of silence, acquired f

household work, or in acts of mercy to the poor. She spoke of her father often, and always in such a way that I could judge of a great affection between them. Of her lover I never heard, and, now t

uties ten times harder. For, had there been any communication between the father or the lover and the maid, I should have felt less like a St. Anthony in the desert. As it was, I had to fight with a terrible sense of responsibility and unlimited power for evil, and God knows how hard that is for any Christian to strive with. 'Twould have been no very hard thing

our the impression of these autumn evenings is clear fixed on my mind. Strangely enough for that north country, they were not cold, bu

ing the landscape, the woods streaking the bare fields, the thin outline of hills beyond, the smoke rising from Clachlands' chimneys, and above all, the sun firing the great pool in the river, and flaming among clouds in the west. Something of the spiri

ll, more beautiful than this, M

, but not like this

I have never seen any

ngs. Then there are great quiet meadows, where the kine browse, where the air is so still that one can sleep at a thought. There are woods, too-ah! such woods-stretching up hill, and down dale, as green as spring can make them, with long avenues where men may ride; and, perhaps, at th

r?" I asked abruptly,

looke

over by Eskdalemuir and the top of the Ettrick Water. I have heard my father

of the

gely on my ears, for by a curious process of thinking I had already begun to separate the girl from the rest of the folk in the place, and look on her as something nearer in

ame, and she in turn would sometimes call me Jean-and very prettily it s

e I have little to do with, and I am content to dwell here forever, if it

there was little chance; so I changed the subjec

as easy to describe the singing of the wind in the tree-tops. It minded me, I cannot tell how, of a mountain burn, falling into pools and rippling over little shoals of gravel. Now 'twas full and strong, and now 'twas so eerie and wild that it was more like a curlew's note than any human thing. The story was about a knight who sailed to Norway on so

my amazement, there was no

d, "but I do not like it. 'Tis no better

own country. The folk dance to it on the Sunday nights at Rohaine, when blind

stasy of motion; but since all mankind is alike in nature, her blood stirred at the tune. So I sang her another chanson, this time an old love ballad, and then again a war s

ouse that I had thought you, but as full of spirit as a caged hawk.

been solemn praying folk; yet, to my wonder, I found in her a nature loving gayety and mirth, songs and bright colors-a grace which her grave deportment did but the more set off. So she came soon