I think I
also know why the other primitive man of the south, dwelling in a land
of the sun, would be a sun-worshipper: because it gave him reverence
and drew it from him.

We fear endless things when it is dark, the stoutest-hearted of us,
but, in the geniality of a shining sun, we have courage. The picture,
in ancient Greek legend, of husband and wife, one of them about to die,
taking a long farewell as the dipping sun-rays gilt Olympus at its
highest peaks, has often seemed to me a fine linking of the night of
paganism and the morn of sunlit faith.

Odd thoughts to run in a man's head as he walked the dew-damp heather,
careless which track he took, conscious only that he sought a new
morning. But you do think strange thoughts if you have in you any of
the dreamy Celt and have been born and nurtured in the cradle of the
hills. They infect you, I will not say with second sight, though there
have been proved instances, but with their own moods, like a
soft-falling foot, which, in our spiritual pilgrimage, is the Foot of
Fate.

My step lightly touched the heather, but, even so, my way was marked by
a disturbance of the birds and animals of the wild. A grouse ran with
a flutter and took wing with a cry, half in protest at being wakened
from its sleep, half in alarm at my presence. A rabbit rushed from a
sheltering hole in such a hurry that, as I could tell by its clatter
among the bracken, it nearly fell over itself, as rabbits clumsily do,
making fluffy, woolly balls of themselves.

When there is danger about, Nature gives all her children of the open a
chance to escape by instantly warning them, and, in this, alarming
their instinct. My particular rabbit had scarcely run out of hearing
when half a dozen others were scurrying hither and thither in the same
expectant confusion. Poor little things! What a fluster they made,
and their scare communicated itself to a crow in a solitary fir-tree,
against which I nearly collided. He croaked, flapped his wings and
sailed off heavily, blackly, also anxious for safety.

Now, by the sheer exercise of walking, I had spent my restlessness, and
the hill air had driven the blood from my head. Moreover, I grew
tired, for the road tells when you have to pick your steps in the dark,
over rough ground. So, coming upon a fir-tree root, I made a seat of
it, and waited for night to fully turn into day, a transformation which
came swiftly.

We have all seen the first flicke