“Barra,” said Ralph Ingram, “do you know this story of your inspired criminal to be true?”
“I know it to be true,” said Dennis Barra, quietly, “I know it, because I was the man!”
THE GLAMOUR-LAND
He follows on for ever, when all your chase is done,
He follows after shadows, the King of Ireland’s son.
——(?)
In the late autumn snow had fallen; it lay unmelted on the highest of the hills; it often lay there when on lower ground not even a light frost crisped the earth. But now it was very cold, and the trees were glittering with hoar-frost and delicate spikes of ice. The sea ran far inland and made a salt-water lake, almost land-locked. Blue was the key-colour of the place. The sky glowed blue and cloudless; the smooth water was gentian blue; seawards there was a huge bar of sand and shingle, heaped high, and running almost the whole way across the arm of the inrushing sea; therefore whether the tide was high or low the waves broke and leaped and swirled on it, so that the sea looked like a great lake, land-locked on three sides, and bounded on the fourth by a tossing, spouting, milk-white cataract of foam, as the great breakers raged and tumbled over the bar of sand. There were no vague tones nor shadowy outlines; the blue and white were vivid, brilliant. Blue sea—blue sky—blue shadows on the white hills; white snow, white frost on leafless boughs, white foam aglitter in the sun. Blue—blue—blue—and unspeakably blue the shining wells of the sky, into which one might send one’s thought forth in quest of Truth, and return anon bewildered and without booty, for the whole Truth was never yet gleaned from without nor yet from another man. White were the sea-gulls feeding on the foreshore; only a little seaweed-plastered jetty was rich brown and amber yellow; crouched at the foot of the jetty sheltered from the keen wind were some children who added a touch or two of red to the picture, for one of the girls wore a crimson coat and one of the boys a scarlet woollen cap.
These children were telling stories, and it was the red-capped boy’s turn. He was not a very popular teller of tales; yet he gripped his hearers because he wove the stories of the things which he knew in his heart, and not of the things he had heard.
Now the other boys told of pirates and brigands, whether they had practical experience of them or not; for which reason one only of their number knew what he was talking about; he afterwards became a great writer, for he drew upon the bank of knowledge, though how he came by the knowledge he could not tell. His swashbucklers and sea-wolves breathed the breath of life; and people who spent their time in wearily wrestling with office work and household accounts found them very refreshing company.