al of the beginning of the century, began to
read the story of Kathed and Eurelia. Having finished it, he read
another. He read and read, but no brownie came. His candle burned
into the socket. He lighted another, and read again. Still no
brownie appeared, and, hard and straight as was the wooden chair on
which he sat, he began to doze. Presently he started wide awake,
fancying he heard a noise; but nothing was there. He raised his
book once more, and read until he had finished the stories in it:
for the verse he had no inclination that night. As soon as they
were all consumed, he began to feel very eerie: his courage had been
sheltering itself behind his thoughts, which the tales he had been
reading had kept turned away from the object of dread. Still deeper
and deeper grew the night around him, until the bare, soulless waste
of it came at last, when a brave man might welcome any ghost for the
life it would bring. And ever as it came, the tide of fear flowed
more rapidly, until at last it rose over his heart, and threatened
to stifle him. The direst foe of courage is the fear itself, not
the object of it; and the man who can overcome his own terror is a
hero and more. In this Fergus had not yet deserved to be
successful. That kind of victory comes only of faith. Still, he
did not fly the field; he was no coward. At the same time, prizing
courage, scorning fear, and indeed disbelieving in every nocturnal
object of terror except robbers, he came at last to such an all but
abandonment of dread, that he dared not look over his shoulder, lest
he should see the brownie standing at his back; he would rather be
seized from behind and strangled in his hairy grasp, than turn and
die of the seeing. The night was dark--no moon and many clouds.
Not a sound came from the close. The cattle, the horses, the pigs,
the cocks and hens, the very cats and rats seemed asleep. There was
not a rustle in the thatch, a creak in the couples. It was well,
for the slightest noise would have brought his heart into his mouth,
and he would have been in great danger of scaring the household, and
for ever disgracing himself, with a shriek. Yet he longed to hear
something stir. Oh! for the stamp of a horse from the stable or the
low of a cow from the byre! But they were all under the brownie's
spell, and he was coming--toeless feet, and thumbed but fingerless
hands! as if he was made with stockings, and hum'le mittens! Was it
t