White from brief turbulent channels to chasms and 

 Weather, crevasses whence ceaselessly ascends the damp 

 smell of churned surge, above which as cease- 

 lessly rises a phantom spray. Again, there 

 is that strange, continual earth -movement, 

 the alarm of all unfamiliar wayfarers. Who 

 suddenly unloosened that rush of rock and 

 earth yonder? What enemy moved that 

 boulder that leapt and hurtled and crashed 

 downward and beyond, but a score yards 

 away ? Of what elfin - artillery are those 

 rattling stones the witness ? What hand, in 

 the silence, thrust itself through the snow and 

 crumbled that old serrated ledge, where, a 

 week ago, the red deer stood sniffing the 

 wind, where, yesterday perhaps, the white 

 ptarmigan searched the heather ? 



Moreover we are in the domain of the eagle, 

 the raven, and the corbie. They are seldom 

 long silent there. And that sudden call on 

 the wind ? . . . what but the Merry Folk, 

 Claim Aighean Siubhlach, the Wandering 

 Deer-Clan, passing like drifting shadows over 

 white heather-pastures lost to view ? It is 

 long since the love-belling of the stags made 

 musical the mountain - side : was not 'the 

 Silence of the Deer' the first sign of winter 

 come again ? But that cry was the cry of 

 hunger a guth acaimeach, a sobbing voice, 



330 



