But suddenly Sorcha caught sight of something white leaping against the sunrise.
Alan's gaze followed her trembling arm and outstretched finger. He, too, saw, but unrecognisingly, a white horse, prancing and screaming along the verge of the granite precipice of Sgòrr-Glan.
The mad beast was now on the Sgòrr itself. Behind were deep corries and ravines: in front, nothing but the flaming disc of fire, nothing but that sheer blank wall of granite, straight from the brow of the Sgòrr to where the Srúantsrhà surged darkly its tortuous way, two thousand feet below.
A faint, impalpable mist was in the air. This, doubtless, it was that made the white horse loom larger and larger, till it stood out against the morning, vast as Liath-Macha, the untamable phantom steed, "grey to whiteness," that Cuculain the Hero rode triumphantly through the valley of the shadow of death.
Then it was as though it leaped against the sun itself.
XII
Week after week went by, changelessly fine, so that in the Strath men began to shake their heads ominously because of the long drought. In the memory of none had there been an autumn so lovely. For a brief spell, in mid August, coming indeed with the storm of wind which had helped the flames utterly to consume the few poor buildings of Anabal Gilchrist on Tornideon, great clouds had travelled inland from the Atlantic, and had burst floodingly upon hill and valley. But in less than a week the sky was clear again, and of a richer, deeper blue. The whole mountain-land was veiled in beauty.
The woods at the end of October were, other than the pine-forests, a blaze of glory. Few leaves had fallen, except from the limes and sycamores, and these sparsely only ... scarce enough to lay a pathway of flakes of yellow gold before the hinds and fawns that trooped through the sunlit glades. The innumerable rowan-trees wore fiery hues upon their feathery foliage: everywhere the scarlet berries suspended in blood-red clusters against the blue sky or the cool greenness.
The dream, the spell, was not only upon the beautiful green earth. It lay elsewhere than there, or in the deeps of heaven: elsewhere than on the quiet waters which slept against the shores beyond the mountains and slumbered immeasurably toward the ever-receding west, with a soft moaning only, wonderful and sweet to hear.
For it was upon the heart and in the brain of each of the mountaineers of Iolair: but most upon Sorcha and Alan.