Through the darkness that lightened momently it came down the glens and the dim braes of bracken. Many waters felt the breath of it, and leaped.
The silences of the forest were as yet unbroken. Unbroken of the wind, at least: for, faint and far, there rose and fell a monotonous chanting, the chanting of a gaunt, dwarfed, misshapen figure that moved like a drifting shadow from pine-glade to pine-glade.
But as dawn broke wanly upon the tallest trees, the wings of the tempest struck one and all into a mighty roar, reverberatingly prolonged: a solemn, slow-sounding anthem, full of the awe of the Night, and of the majesty of the Day, hymning mysteries older than the first dawn, deeper than the deepest dark.
And after the passing of that great wind the forest was still. Only a whisper as of the sea breathed through its illimitable green wave.
[BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE]
BY MRS. WILLIAM SHARP
Pharais, the first book written by William Sharp over the signature of "Fiona Macleod," was published, in 1904, by Mr. Frank Murray (Derby), as the third volume of the "Regent Library," (of which Vistas, by William Sharp, was the second volume). It was reissued, in 1907, by Mr. T. N. Foulis. In America Pharais was originally published by Messrs. Stone & Kimball (Chicago), as the first volume of their "Green Tree Library," and was reissued by Messrs. Duffield & Co. in 1906.
The Mountain Lovers was published in 1895, in England and America by Mr. John Lane, and a second edition was brought out in 1907.
Footnotes
[1] A slightly anglicised lection of the Gaelic word Pàras = Paradise, Heaven. "Pharais," properly, is the genitive and dative case of Pàras, as in the line from Muireadhach Albannach, quoted after the title page. "Mithich domh triall gu tigh Pharais"—"It is time for me to go up unto the House of Paradise."