A MOORLAND SANCTUARY 125 



drearily among the hills. It was the cry of a 

 bittern. 



Hidden completely by the lower slopes of the 

 moor from view of the farmstead and the 

 winding road across the hills, was a deep and 

 narrow gorge. At its upper end, a torrent 

 leaped a sheer precipice of rock into a cup- 

 shaped pool. Past the shallows at the margin 

 of the pool, the brook flowed between steep 

 banks clothed with fern and heather and strewn 

 with rugged boulders, then gradually broadened, 

 and at the outlet of the gorge was lost amid 

 the tangled vegetation of an almost impassable 

 morass. 



From this sanctuary in the wilderness came 

 the loud, weird cry that disturbed the stillness 

 of the gloom. The gorge lay in dense shadow. 

 None of the beauty of the afterglow was mirrored 

 in the pool beneath the waterfall, or in the clouds 

 of spray that wreathed the precipice. But the 

 last golden light from the western sky, slanting 

 across the entrance to the gorge, shone on the 

 lingering vapours above the surface of the brook, 

 and caused them to appear like phantoms rising, 

 one by one, from the narrow mouth of some 

 deep tomb, and gliding away, in long procession, 

 to begin a night's fantastic revels on the marsh. 



Suddenly, in the half-transparent haze, the 

 bittern appeared flying from the direction of the 



