ze, it arose renewed and rejoicing to dance upon the
image of the stars.

I chanced to stand that night by the marsh's edge, forgetting in my
mind the affairs of men; and I saw the marsh-fires come leaping up
from all the perilous places. And they came up by flocks the whole
night long to the number of a great multitude, and danced away
together over the marshes.

And I believe that there was a great rejoicing all that night among
the kith of the Elf-folk.

The Highwaymen

Tom o' the Roads had ridden his last ride, and was now alone in the
night. From where he was, a man might see the white recumbent sheep
and the black outline of the lonely downs, and the grey line of the
farther and lonelier downs beyond them; or in hollows far below him,
out of the pitiless wind, he might see the grey smoke of hamlets
arising from black valleys. But all alike was black to the eyes of
Tom, and all the sounds were silence in his ears; only his soul
struggled to slip from the iron chains and to pass southwards into
Paradise. And the wind blew and blew.

For Tom tonight had nought but the wind to ride; they had taken his
true black horse on the day when they took from him the green fields
and the sky, men's voices and the laughter of women, and had left
him alone with chains about his neck to swing in the wind for ever.
And the wind blew and blew.

But the soul of Tom o' the Roads was nipped by the cruel chains, and
whenever it struggled to escape it was beaten backwards into the
iron collar by the wind that blows from Paradise from the south.
And swinging there by the neck, there fell away old sneers from off
his lips, and scoffs that he had long since scoffed at God fell from
his tongue, and there rotted old bad lusts out of his heart, and
from his fingers the stains of deeds that were evil; and they all
fell to the ground and grew there in pallid rings and clusters. And
when these ill things had all fallen away, Tom's soul was clean
again, as his early love had found it, a long while since in spring;
and it swung up there in the wind with the bones of Tom, and with
his old torn coat and rusty chains.

And the wind blew and blew.

And ever and anon the souls of the sepultured, coming from
consecrated acres, would go by beating up wind to Paradise past the
Gallows Tree and past the soul of Tom, that might not go free.

Night after night Tom watched the sheep upon the downs with empty
hollow sockets, till his dead