shining white, with black heads
and necks, flying in wedge-shaped flocks, and rose-coloured
spoonbills, and flamingoes with scarlet wings tipped with black, and
ibises, and ducks of different colours, and many other birds, both
water and land, appeared, flock after flock, all flying as fast as
their wings could bear them towards the north.

He continued watching them until it was past noon, and then he saw
fewer and fewer, only very big birds, appearing; and then these were
seen less and less until there were none. Then he turned his eyes on
the plain and tried to find the herd of wild cattle, but they were
no longer visible; it was as he had seen it in the morning with the
pale blue haze over all the distant earth. He was told that the
power to see all distant things with a vision equal to his mother's
was now exhausted, and when he grieved at the loss she comforted him
with the promise that it would be renewed at some other time.

[Illustration: ]

Now one day when they were out together Martin was greatly surprised
and disturbed at a change in his mother. When he spoke to her she
was silent; and byand-by, drawing a little away, he looked at her
with a fear which increased to a kind of terror, so strangely
altered did she seem, standing motionless, gazing fixedly with
wide-open eyes at the plain beneath them, her whole face white and
drawn with a look of rage. He had an impulse to fly from her and
hide himself in some hole in the rocks from the sight of that pale,
wrathful face, but when he looked round him he was afraid to move
from her, for the hill itself seemed changed, and now looked black
and angry even as she did. The ground he stood on, the grey old
stones covered with silvery-white and yellow lichen and pretty
flowery, creeping plants, so beautiful to look at in the bright
sunlight a few moments ago, now were covered with a dull mist which
appeared to be rising from them, making the air around them dark and
strange. And the air, too, had become sultry and close, and the sky
was growing dark above them. Then suddenly remembering all her love
and kindness he flew to her, and clinging to her dress sobbed out,
"O mother, mother, what is it?"

She put her hand on him, then drew him up to her side, with his feet
on the stone she was standing by. "Would you like to see what I see,
Martin?" she asked, and taking the phial from her bosom she rubbed
the white thick liquid on his eye-balls, and in a little while,