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, 

 Clann 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 



