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    GREEN FIRE

    A Romance

    BY

    FIONA MACLEOD

    "_While still I may, I write for you
    The love I lived, the dream I knew_"



    NEW YORK
    HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
    1896




    Copyright, 1896, by HARPER & BROTHERS.

    _All rights reserved._




    TO

    ESCLARMOUNDO

    "_Nec sine te nec tecum vivere possum._"--OVID



"_There are those of us who would rather be with Cathal of the Woods,
and be drunken with green fire, than gain the paradise of the holy
Molios who banned him, if in that gain were to be heard no more the
earth-sweet ancient song of the blood that is in the veins of youth...._

"_O green fire of life, pulse of the world! O Love, O Youth, O Dream of
Dreams!_

  "THE ANNIR CHOILLE."




    CONTENTS



    BOOK FIRST

  THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE

  CHAP.                                     PAGE

  I. EUCHARIS                                  3

  II. THE HOUSE OF KERIVAL                    22

  III. STORM                                  37

  IV. THE DREAM AND THE DREAMERS              53

  V. THE WALKER IN THE NIGHT                  69

  VI. VIA OSCURA                              99

  VII. "DEIREADH GACH COGAIDH, SITH" (THE
        END OF ALL WARFARE, PEACE)           114

  VIII. THE UNFOLDING OF THE SCROLL          125


    BOOK SECOND

  THE HERDSMAN

  IX. RETROSPECTIVE: FROM THE HEBRID ISLES   149

  X. AT THE EDGE OF THE SHADOW               175

  XI. MYSTERY                                195

  XII. IN THE GREEN ARCADES                  208

  XIII. THE MESSAGE                          224

  XIV. THE LAUGHTER OF THE KING              239


    BOOK THIRD

  XV. THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD                259



    GREEN FIRE




    BOOK FIRST

    _THE BIRDS OF ANGUS OGUE_



    Hither and thither,
      And to and fro,
    They thrid the Maze
      Of Weal and Woe:
      O winds that blow
    For golden weather
      Blow me the birds,
      All white as snow
    On the hillside heather--
    Blow me the birds
      That Angus know:
    Blow me the birds,
      Be it Weal or Woe!




CHAPTER I

EUCHARIS


 _Then, in the violet forest, all a-bourgeon, Eucharis said to me: "It
 is Spring."_--ARTHUR RIMBAUD.


After the dim purple bloom of a suspended spring, a green rhythm ran
from larch to thorn, from lime to sycamore; spread from meadow to
meadow, from copse to copse, from hedgerow to hedgerow. The blackthorn
had already snowed upon the nettle-garths. In the obvious nests among
the bare boughs of ash and beech the eggs of the blackbird were
blue-green as the sky that March had bequeathed to April. For days
past, when the breath of the equinox had surged out of the west, the
missel-thrushes had bugled from the wind-swayed topmost branches of the
tallest elms. Everywhere the green rhythm ran.

In every leaf that had uncurled there was a delicate bloom, that which
is upon all things in the first hours of life. The spires of the grass
were washed in a green, dewy light. Out of the brown earth a myriad
living things thrust tiny green shafts, arrow-heads, bulbs, spheres,
clusters. Along the pregnant soil keener ears than ours would have
heard the stir of new life, the innumerous whisper of the bursting
seed; and, in the wind itself, shepherding the shadow-chased sunbeams,
the voice of that vernal gladness which has been man's clarion since
Time began.

Day by day the wind-wings lifted a more multitudinous whisper from
the woodlands. The deep hyperborean note, from the invisible ocean
of air, was still audible: within the concourse of bare boughs which
lifted against it, that surging voice could not but have an echo of its
wintry roar. In the sun-hav