第65章

"Then meet me at the Gled's Cleuch Head at the sun's setting,"said the bird, and it flew away.

Now it seemed to the man that in a twinkling it was sunset, and he found himself at the Gled's Cleuch Head with the bird flapping in the heather before him.The place was a long rift in the hill, made green with juniper and hazel, where it was said True Thomas came to drink the water.

"Turn ye to the west," said the whaup, "and let the sun fail on your face; then turn ye five times round about and say after me the Rune Of the Heather and the Dew." And before he knew the man did as he was told, and found himself speaking strange words, while his head hummed and danced as if in a fever.

"Now lay ye down and put your ear to the earth," said the bird;and the man did so.Instantly a cloud came over his brain, and he did not feel the ground on which he lay or the keen hill-air which blew about him.He felt himself falling deep into an abysm of space, then suddenly caught up and set among the stars of heaven.Then slowly from the stillness there welled forth music, drop by drop like the clear falling of rain, and the man shuddered for he knew that he heard the beginning of the Rime.

High rose the air, and trembled among the tallest pines and the summits of great hills.And in it were the sting of rain and the blatter of hail, the soft crush of snow and the rattle of thunder among crags.Then it quieted to the low sultry croon which told of blazing midday when the streams are parched and the bent crackles like dry tinder.Anon it was evening, and the melody dwelled among the high soft notes which mean the coming of dark and the green light of sunset.Then the whole changed to a great paean which rang like an organ through the earth.There were trumpet notes ill it and flute notes and the plaint of pipes.

"Come forth," it cried; "the sky is wide and it is a far cry to the world's end.The fire crackles fine o' nights below the firs, and the smell of roasting meat and wood smoke is dear to the heart of man.Fine, too is the sting of salt and the rasp of the north wind in the sheets.Come forth, one and all, unto the great lands oversea, and the strange tongues and the hermit peoples.Learn before you die to follow the Piper's Son, and though your old bones bleach among grey rocks, what matter if you have had your bellyful of life and come to your heart's desire?"And the tune fell low and witching, bringing tears to the eyes and joy to the heart; and the man knew (though no one told him)that this was the first part of the Rime, the Song of the Open Road, the Lilt of the Adventurer, which shall be now and ever and to the end of days.

Then the melody changed to a fiercer and sadder note.He saw his forefathers, gaunt men and terrible, run stark among woody hills.

He heard the talk of the bronze-clad invader, and the jar and clangour as stone met steel.Then rose the last coronach of his own people, hiding in wild glens, starving in corries, or going hopelessly to the death.He heard the cry of the Border foray, the shouts of the famished Scots as they harried Cumberland, and he himself rode in the midst of them.Then the tune fell more mournful and slow, and Flodden lay before him.He saw the flower of the Scots gentry around their King, gashed to the breast-bone, still fronting the lines of the south, though the paleness of death sat on each forehead."The flowers of the Forest are gone," cried the lilt, and through the long years he heard the cry of the lost, the desperate, fighting for kings over the water and princes in the heather."Who cares?" cried the air."Man must die, and how can he die better than in the stress of fight with his heart high and alien blood on his sword? Heigh-ho!

One against twenty, a child against a host, this is the romance of life." And the man's heart swelled, for he knew (though no one told him) that this was the Song of Lost Battles which only the great can sing before they die.