_But as the rosy fingers of the morn melt and the broad day fares forth, the vision fades, and I who saw and heard must go and sit down to my plain saltless tale. Once I wrote a book, every word of it, in the open air. It was full of the sweet things of the country, so at least as they seemed to me. I saw the hens nestle sleepily in the holes of the bank-side where the dry dust is, and so I wrote it down. I heard the rain drum on the broad leaves over my head, and I wrote that down also. Day after day I rose and wrote in the dawn, and sometimes I seemed to recapture a leaf or a passing glance of a chapter-heading out of the Book Sealed. It came back to me how the girls were kissed and love was made in the days when the Book Sealed was the Book Open, and when I cared not a jot for anything that was written therein. So as well as I could I wrote these things down in the red dawn. And so till the book was done_. _Then the day comes when the book is printed and bound, and when the critics write of it after their kind, things good and things evil. But I that have gathered the fairy gold dare not for my life look again within, lest it should be even as they say, and I should find but withered leaves therein. For the sake of the vision of the breaking day and the incommunicable hope, I shall look no more upon it. But ever with the eternal human expectation, I rise and wait the morning and the final opening of the "Book Sealed_." S.R. CROCKETT. _NOTE_. _I am deeply in the debt of my friend, Mr. Andrew Lang, for the ballad of 'Kenmure' which he has written to grace my bare boards and spice the plain fare here set out in honour of the ancient Free Province_. BOOK FIRST ADVENTURES _Lo, in the dance the wine-drenched coronal From shoulder white and golden hair doth fall! A-nigh his breast each youth doth hold an head, Twin flushing cheeks and locks unfilleted; Swifter and swifter doth the revel move Athwart the dim recesses of the grove ... Where Aphrodite reigneth in her prime, And laughter ringeth all the summer time_. _There hemlock branches make a languorous gloom, And heavy-headed poppies drip perfume In secret arbours set in garden close; And all the air, one glorious breath of rose, Shakes not a dainty petal from the trees. Nor stirs a ripple on the Cyprian seas_. "_The Choice of Herakles_." I THE MINISTER OF DOUR _This window looketh towards the west, And o'er the meadows grey Glimmer the snows that coldly crest The hills of Galloway_. _The winter broods on all between-- In every furrow lies; Nor is there aught of summer green, Nor blue of summer skies_. _Athwart the dark grey rain-clouds flash The seabird's sweeping wings, And through the stark and ghostly ash The wind of winter sings_. _The purple woods are dim with rain, The cornfields dank and bare; And eyes that look for golden grain Find only stubble there_.