men did not die. There was none to tell him the secrets of the glens, and what sweet shadows lay far up where the corries were; nor what the eagle cried to the deer on the crest of Moruisg, but only the broadening stream, with its song of sobbing undertones.
So he listened, and still the stream sang on—not the sad song it sings to-day, with its sighings over dear dead faces, and the sorrows of the old sheilings, and the memories of the fair women and brave men and children golden-haired, among the grasses where they sleep for ever, in the glens. For sorrow in this world, the stream has learned, gathers in quiet places like the dust. To him, in the beginning, it sang only of beauty, brightness, and the solemn joy of the mountains, in the morning sunshine, or in the hour of gloaming, when the hills sit close together, like kings and queens whose glory is departing, but whose majesty remains.
So, as he sat and listened, his heart sang within him, for he knew nought of sadness.
‘Here I will dwell for ever,’ so he sang. ‘Stream of the mountains, sweet with the dreams of fairies. Ever and ever you shall sing your song to me. Ages are nothing. Only your song is all.’ But the stream sighed strangely to his singing, and the salt sea shivered along the sand.
So he came and went; and there was none to ask him of his coming or his going, and he brought no being with him to share the sunlight and the sea.
And the echoes up the glen caught his song, and flung it back to him again with laughter, as though they knew he dreamed. Ah yes, they knew, the old, old solitudes! Their wisdom was a greater thing than he! ‘Come to us!’ they cried. ‘There are places for your tired limbs, when you weary. Deep is the heather, soft the tangled grass when you are tired; and the corries are cool for your sleeping, when the sun rests high on Moruisg, and the breezes die!’ He knew not, but they knew. And they drew near each other in the shadows, and they laughed low laughter that had sobbing in it, like the moan of the water in the moss . . . till the deer
