ing and eddying through the brown trees on their
slopes. Down in London a world had gone mad--but the mist took no heed
of such foolishness. Lines of men and women, linked arm-in-arm, were
promenading Piccadilly to celebrate the End of the Madness; shrieking
parties were driving to Wimbledon, or Limehouse, or up and down Bond
Street in overweighted taxis, but the mist rolled on silently and
inexorably. It took account of none of these things.

Since the beginning a mist such as this one had drifted up the valley
from the open sea; until the end it would continue. . . . It was part
of the Laws of Nature, and the man who watched it coming turned with a
little shudder.

In front of him, the moors stretched brown and rugged till they lost
themselves in the snow-capped hills. Here and there the bogland showed
a darker tint, and at his feet, cupped out in the smooth greystone, lay
a sheet of water. It was dark and evil-looking, and every now and then
a puff of wind eddied down from the hills and ruffled the smooth
surface.

The colours of the moors were sombre and dark; and below the snows far
away in the heart of Ross-shire it seemed to the man who watched with
brooding eyes that it was as the blackness of night. A deserted dead
world, with a cold grey shroud, to hide its nakedness.

He shivered again, and wiped the moisture from his face, while a
terrier beside him crept nearer for comfort.

And then came the change. Swiftly, triumphantly, the sun caught the
mist and rolled it away. One by one the rugged lines of hills came
into being again--one by one they shouted, "We are free, behold
us. . . ."

The first was a delicate brown, and just behind it a little peak of
violet loomed up. Away still further the browns grew darker, more
rich--the violets became a wondrous purple. And the black underneath
the snows seemed to be of the richest velvet.

The pond at the man's feet glinted a turquoise blue; the bogland shone
silver in the sunlight. And then, to crown it all, the smooth snow
slopes in the distance glowed pink and orange, where before they had
been white and cold.

For Life had come to a Land of Death.

Gradually the brooding look on the man's face faded, a gleam of
whimsical humour shone in his eyes. He took an old briar out of his
pocket and commenced to fill it; and soon the blue smoke was curling
lazily upwards into the still air. But he still stood motionless,
staring over the moors, his ha