trange heart of the Gael below him. He had an unutterable sense of epic
importance, as if he were somehow lifting all humanity into a prouder
and more passionate region of the air. As he swung himself up also into
the evening light he felt as if he were rising on enormous wings.

Legends of the morning of the world which he had heard in childhood or
read in youth came back upon him in a cloudy splendour, purple tales
of wrath and friendship, like Roland and Oliver, or Balin and Balan,
reminding him of emotional entanglements. Men who had loved each other
and then fought each other; men who had fought each other and then loved
each other, together made a mixed but monstrous sense of momentousness.
The crimson seas of the sunset seemed to him like a bursting out of some
sacred blood, as if the heart of the world had broken.

Turnbull was wholly unaffected by any written or spoken poetry; his was
a powerful and prosaic mind. But even upon him there came for the moment
something out of the earth and the passionate ends of the sky. The only
evidence was in his voice, which was still practical but a shade more
quiet.

"Do you see that summer-house-looking thing over there?" he asked
shortly. "That will do for us very well."

Keeping himself free from the tangle of the hedge he strolled across
a triangle of obscure kitchen garden, and approached a dismal shed or
lodge a yard or two beyond it. It was a weather-stained hut of grey
wood, which with all its desolation retained a tag or two of trivial
ornament, which suggested that the thing had once been a sort of
summer-house, and the place probably a sort of garden.

"That is quite invisible from the road," said Turnbull, as he entered
it, "and it will cover us up for the night."

MacIan looked at him gravely for a few moments. "Sir," he said, "I ought
to say something to you. I ought to say----"

"Hush," said Turnbull, suddenly lifting his hand; "be still, man."

In the sudden silence, the drumming of the distant horses grew louder
and louder with inconceivable rapidity, and the cavalcade of police
rushed by below them in the lane, almost with the roar and rattle of an
express train.

"I ought to tell you," continued MacIan, still staring stolidly at the
other, "that you are a great chief, and it is good to go to war behind
you."

Turnbull said nothing, but turned and looked out of the foolish lattice
of the little windows, then he said, "We must have food and sleep