Of all places in the island, except the rocky headlands whose flanks were laved by the sea, this Stone of the Past, as Seumas called it, was that most frequented by Alastair. At its base he had listened, as a boy, to the tales of the old islander; beneath it, his fantasy now persuaded him, was one of the hidden ways that led to that House of Paradise of which he so often dreamed. There the four silent mourners met that afternoon to fulfil the wish of one among them, who loved to think that his little _uan_ would come back some moonshine night or in a still dawn, and, taking their hands, lead his father and mother by that secret pathway through _Domhan Tòir_ to _Tir-na-h'Oigh_, whence, in good time, they would arise and go up into Pharais. Lora had already been on the spot with Seumas. While the latter had dug the place of sleep, she, with white chalk picked from the shore, had printed in large, heavy letters these words upon the seaward side of the stone: "Take unto Thy compassion this little one, and us who follow." There were no words spoken as Mary, kneeling, took the child from Lora's arms, and laid it, wrapped in a white sheet filled with fragrant gale, in the wood-shored grave that had been reverently prepared. The afternoon had grown chill. Seaward, a gray mass had risen as if out of the waste of waters. All were still kneeling--while Seumas laid turf and heather above the small wooden lid covering the narrow house that would give the body sanctuary for a time--when the snow began to come down. There was no wind, so the flakes fell light as feathers, grey in the gathering dusk as the down that falls from the wind-swept breasts of wild swans in their flight to or from the Polar seas. Denser and denser it came; soundless at first, but after a while with a faint rustling and whirling, as though the flakes were wings of invisible birds of silence. The grey gloom thickened. Already the sea was obscured. Its voice was audible the more loudly ... a calling voice; but dull, listless, melancholy with ancient, unforgotten pain and all its burthen of immemorial lore. The four mourners rose. The two women, with bowed heads, murmured words of prayer and farewell. Seumas, crossing himself, muttered: "Deireadh gach comuinn, sgaoileadh; deireadh gach cogaidh, sith"--"the end of all meetings, parting; the end of all striving, peace." Alastair looked eagerly through the snow-dusk lest the child should come again at once and go by them unseen. By the time they reached home, there was a thick twilight all about them. A little later, looking out into the night, they saw the flakes drift over and past them like a myriad of winged things hurrying before a wind that pursued, devouring. The island lay in a white shroud. At the extreme margin, a black, pulsating line seemed to move sinuously from left to right.