ais" was written by a woman, but "The
Dan-nan-Ron" and "Silk o' the Kine" in "The Sin-Eater" (1895) seemed to
me hardly a woman's. "The Washer of the Ford" (1896) was written from
the man's point of view, too, but "Green Fire" (1896) seemed feminine
again. So I wobbled in my opinion until "The Divine Adventure" (1900)
and the critical writings of the volume that story gives title to, and
the critical writing in "The Winged Destiny" (1905), made me believe
again that "Fiona Macleod" was surely Sharp. I did not come upon the
articles that now make up "Where the Forest Murmurs" (1907) until after
the death of Sharp and the disclosure of the secret. Had his death not
divulged the secret of the identity of "Fiona Macleod," it seems to me
that collection must have disclosed it. Had Sharp lived after this there
would not have been possible for him much further work from the
seclusion his pseudonym gave him, and I doubt, once the secret was out,
it would have been possible for him to write of things Celtic with the
old gusto.

After all has been said it must be confessed, I think, that Sharp did
not know the Highlander, either of the mainland or of the islands, very
intimately. He wrote much better of his dream of life on the west coast
in prehistoric times--out of his imagination of what that life must have
been, an imagination founded on the reading of the old legends and
modern collections of folk-lore, such as the "Carmina Gadelica" of Mr.
Carmichael--than he did out of his knowledge of Highland life of to-day.
The Achannas are in many of his tales of modern times, and wherever
they are there is unreality, if not melodrama. Unreality, too, there is,
in many phases, in the modern tales, and "highfalutinness" everywhere in
them. And both unreality and "highfalutinness" offend in these modern
tales as they would not in the tales of far times, though in these, as a
matter of fact, they are not so much in evidence.

It would almost seem that the approach to reality drove Highland
atmosphere from the stories. In "The Sin-Eater," one of the best of his
writings that might be classed as a short story, the sin-eater and his
confidant are Highlanders, but the description of the scene of his
misfortune, the steading of the Blairs, might well have been that
nearest to "Silence Farm." It is faithfully described, the scenes about
the little home, whose owner lies dead, having the very smack of
realism. In the latter part of the story th