til morning returns, bringing peace. Suffer me to
pass on upon my way alone; it is thus that I shall be least lonely,
counting for my friend Him who is the friend of all the distressed; it
is thus that I shall be the most happy, having taken my farewell of
earthly happiness, and willingly accepted sorrow for my portion."

I looked at the face of the crucifix, and, though I was no friend to
images, and despised that imitative and grimacing art of which it was a
rude example, some sense of what the thing implied was carried home to
my intelligence. The face looked down upon me with a painful and deadly
contraction; but the rays of a glory encircled it, and reminded me that
the sacrifice was voluntary. It stood there, crowning the rock, as it
still stands on so many highway sides, vainly preaching to passers-by,
an emblem of sad and noble truths; that pleasure is not an end, but an
accident; that pain is the choice of the magnanimous; that it is best to
suffer all things and do well. I turned and went down the mountain in
silence; and when I looked back for the last time before the wood closed
about my path, I saw Olalla still leaning on the crucifix.

HEATHERCAT

A FRAGMENT

HEATHERCAT

CHAPTER I

TRAQUAIRS OF MONTROYMONT

The period of this tale is in the heat of the _killing-time_; the scene
laid for the most part in solitary hills and morasses, haunted only by
the so-called Mountain Wanderers, the dragoons that came in chase of
them, the women that wept on their dead bodies, and the wild birds of
the moorland that have cried there since the beginning. It is a land of
many rain-clouds; a land of much mute history, written there in
pre-historic symbols. Strange green raths are to be seen commonly in the
country, above all by the kirkyards; barrows of the dead, standing
stones; beside these, the faint, durable footprints and handmarks of the
Roman; and an antiquity older perhaps than any, and still living and
active--a complete Celtic nomenclature and a scarce-mingled Celtic
population. These rugged and grey hills were once included in the
boundaries of the Caledonian Forest. Merlin sat here below his
apple-tree and lamented Gwendolen; here spoke with Kentigern; here fell
into his enchanted trance. And the legend of his slumber seems to body
forth the story of that Celtic race, deprived for so many centuries of
their authentic speech, surviving with their ancestral inheritance of
melancholy pe