Round the pool were many of those lovely silent children of the dusk. Dim scores were massed under the branches, or crept among the willows. Some hung from the sprays of the birches, peering into the ominous blackness of the water underneath. Others, straight and intent, or all tremulous and wavering, stood among the reeds, the most sensitive of which had still a vague breath of sound. Many of these merged into the pool, but their ranks never thinned. By every reed stood a shadow, intent, inclined before a wind that blew not. Of all that passed into the water not one reached the star that gleamed and moved, and seemed to lift and fall in the heart of the pool. Not one crossed the faintly luminous semi-circle that lay upon the surface. Each sank down, down, till the star in the depths shone far above. But by the upper margins of the pool, where the pines ran steeply toward it, one shadow sat that did not waver, did not move, that grew darker and more dark, blackly distinct, though all around was blurred or fugitive. The night advanced. The shadows moved onward before it, or were enveloped in its folds. Though in the forest no travelling susurrus was audible, the wind had arisen again upon the heights. Restless, forlorn, it lifted its wild wings from steep to steep. Its vibrant rise, its baffled fall, re-echoed faintly or dully. At times there was a thin, shrewd, infinitely remote whistling. This was the myriad air-spray of the wind driven through the spires of the heather. With the second hour of the night the moon rose over the shoulder of Iolair. For a time a gold dust had glittered along the edges of the granite precipices. Then the summit of the mountain had gleamed like a vast bronze altar lit by hidden lamps. Suddenly, almost in a moment, a gigantic arm swung upward an immense globe of fire. As the moon rose she emitted a more yellow flame. Downward a flood of orange glory poured upon the highest peaks--barren, scoriated, lifeless, but for the lichens that thrive upon snows and chill dews. The globe--in which, as in the sun, could be seen a whirling of light--rapidly diminished in size. Less portentous, it swung through space in an added loveliness. Serene, equable, its yellow glow spread over mountain and forest, down every broad strath, each grave-dark glen, down every straggling hillside corrie. The coming of the moonbeams wrought a fantastic new life in the forest. The lightward boughs took on a proud armour. The branches moved against the night, mailed like serpents with moving scales of gold and silver.