The Project Gutenberg EBook of Gilian The Dreamer, by Neil Munro

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: Gilian The Dreamer
His Fancy, His Love and Adventure

Author: Neil Munro

Release Date: August 1, 2007 [EBook #22211]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GILIAN THE DREAMER ***

Produced by David Widger

GILIAN THE DREAMER

Gilian the Dreamer, His Fancy, His Love and Adventure

By Neil Munro

Author of 'John Splendid' 'The Lost Pibroch' &c.

1899

GILIAN THE DREAMER

PART I

CHAPTER I--WHEN THE GEAN-TREE BLOSSOMED

Rain was beating on the open leaf of plane and beech, and rapping at the
black doors of the ash-bud, and the scent of the gean-tree flourish hung
round the road by the river, vague, sweet, haunting, like a recollection
of the magic and forgotten gardens of youth. Over the high and numerous
hills, mountains of deer and antique forest, went the mist, a slattern,
trailing a ragged gown. The river sucked below the banks and clamoured
on the cascades, drawn unwillingly to the sea, the old gluttonous sea
that must ever be robbing the glens of their gathered waters. And the
birds were at their loving, or the building of their homes, flying among
the bushes, trolling upon the bough. One with an eye, as the saying
goes, could scarcely pass among this travail of the new year without
some pleasure in the spectacle, though the rain might drench him to
the skin. He could not but joy in the thrusting crook of the fern and
bracken; what sort of heart was his if it did not lift and swell to see
the new fresh green blown upon the grey parks, to see the hedges burst,
the young firs of the Blaranbui prick up among the slower elder pines
and oaks?

Some of the soul and rapture of the day fell with the rain upon the
boy. He hurried with bare feet along the river-side from the glen to the
town, a bearer of news, old news of its kind, yet great news too, but
now and then he would linger in the odour of the bloom that sprayed the
gean-tree like a fall of snow, or he would cast an eye admiring upon the
turgid river, washing from bank to bank, and feel the strange uneasiness
of wonder and surmise,