his
tormented soul down to torture that shall endure everlastingly!"

As the listeners heard the dirge of doom, there were none who did not
think of Ibycus, the gentle-hearted poet, so much beloved and so
foully done to death, and in the tensity of the moment when the voices
ceased, a great thrill passed over the multitudes as a voice, shrill
with amazed horror, burst from one of the uppermost benches:

"_See there! see there! behold, comrade, the cranes of Ibycus!_"

Every eye looked upwards, and, harshly crying, there passed overhead
the flock of cranes to whom the poet had entrusted his dying message.
Then, like an electric shock, there came to all those who beheld the
knowledge that he who had cried aloud was the murderer of Ibycus.

"Seize him! seize him!" cried in unison the voices of thousands.
"Seize the man, and him to whom he spoke!"

Frantically the trembling wretch tried to deny his words, but it was
too late. The roar of the multitudes was as that of an angry sea that
hungers for its prey and will not be denied. He who had spoken and him
to whom he spoke were seized by a score of eager hands.

In white-faced terror, because the Furies had hunted them down, they
made confession of their crime and were put to death. And the flock of
grey-plumaged, rosy-headed cranes winged their way on to the marshes,
there to beck and bow to each other, and to dance in the golden
sunset, well content because their message was delivered, and Ibycus,
the poet-musician who had given them welcome, was avenged.

SYRINX

"Is it because the wild-wood passion still lingers in
our hearts, because still in our minds the voice of
Syrinx lingers in melancholy music, the music of regret
and longing, that for most of us there is so potent a
spell in running waters?"

Fiona Macleod.

As the evening shadows lengthen, and the night wind softly steals
through the trees, touching with restless fingers the still waters of
the little lochans that would fain have rest, there can be heard a
long, long whisper, like a sigh. There is no softer, sadder note to be
heard in all Pan's great orchestra, nor can one marvel that it should
be so, for the whisper comes from the reeds who gently sway their
heads while the wind passes over them as they grow by lonely lake or
river.

This is the story of Syrinx, the reed, as Ovid has told it to us.

In Arcadia there dwelt a nymph whose name was Syrinx. So fair