The Divine Adventure etc. (Works vol. 4)

ns had taken upon them a bloom soft and wonderful, and we thought that at last we were upon the gates of the hills towards which we had journeyed so eagerly. But when w

o them. So we sat down by the peat-fire in a shepherd's cottage, and ate of milk and porridge, and talked with the man about the ways of that district, and the hills, and how best to reach th

" added the Body, seeing th

eaming of fire. But there isn't a soul in that wood-no, not a wandering tinker. I took my dogs through it to-day, an' there wasn't the sign even of a last-year's gypsy. A

is old father, who was too frail to work, and often could not sleep at nights because of the pleasant but wearying noise the fairies made as they met on the dancing-lawns among the bracken. Our friend had not himself heard the simple people, and in a whisper confided to us that he thought the old man was a bit mazed, and that what he heard was only the solitary playing of the Amadan-Dhu, who, it was known to all, roamed the shadows between the two dusks. "Ke

t, a bit of smooth coral that hung by

amulet?" one

's my l

t the man i

dead thirty

back it was with a wonderful light in his face. Our comrade did not return ... but when we glanced sidelong, lo, the S

y the night, but we would not), the stars h

ollowed that little winding white gleam, somewhat impatient now to reach those far hills where each of us believed he would f

ng ilex, and beyond were tall cypresses, like dark flames rising out of the earth, their hither sides lit with wavering moonfire. Far away the hill-foxes barked. Somewhere near us in the dusk

hispered

less, there was so infinite a peace there, that, merely gazing upon it, our lives stood still. The moonbeam slowly passed from that divine face. I felt my breath rising and falling, like a feather before the mystery of the

of a tree. This man, the twelfth of that company which was gathered about the sleeper in its midst, stared

us as one, I know not. Suddenly three stood in that solitary place, with none beside us, neither sleeping nor watc

ritten here, only that the sleepers seemed to him worn and poor men, ill-clad, weary, and that behind the white face

but only a fire drowning in its own ashes, round which a ma

Though God were to sow living fires about yo

e hope, and that is to believe. Do not mock me." T

s nan Aingeal of our prayers, and two Seraphs-the Eleven Powers and Dominions of the World. And One stared upon them, and upon Him, out of the dark wood, with a face white with despair, that great and terrible Lord of Shadow whom some

ine. Suddenly he fell upon his knees, and

r of the Body, as he rose; "but, lest I forge

-as we walked onward in silence through the dusk of moon and star, and saw the gossamer-w