Isla, the man, stood awhile, strangely tremulous. She could see his nerves quivering below his clothes. He was a big, strong giant of a lover: but he trembled now just like a bit fawn, she thought. His blue eyes were suddenly grown cloudy and dim. Then the deadly frost slew the brain that was the altar where the poet offered up his dreams of beauty. And that is how Isla the dreamer ceased to dream. He was quite white and still when they found him three days later. He seemed a giant of a man as he lay, face upward, among the green flags by the water-edge. The chill starlight of three nights had got into the quiet of his face. * * * * * That night, resumed Coll McColl, after a long pause--that night he, Coll, was walking in the moonlight across the hither slope of Melmonach. He stood under a rowan-tree, and watched a fawn leaping wildly through the fern. While he watched, amazed, he saw a tall shadowy woman pass by. She stopped, and drew a great bow she carried, and shot an arrow. It went through the air with a sharp whistling sound--just like _Silis--Silis--Silis_, Coll said, to give me an idea of it. The arrow went right through the fawn. But here was a strange thing. The fawn leapt away sobbing into the night: while its heart suspended, arrow-pierced, from the white stem of a silver birch. “And to this day,” said Coll at the last, “I am not for knowing who that archer was, or who that fawn. You think it was these two who loved? Well, ’tis Himself knows. But I have this thought of my thinking: that it was only a vision I saw, and that the fawn was the poor suffering heart of Love, and that the Archer was the great Shadowy Archer that hunts among the stars. For in the dark of the morrow after that night I was on Cnoc-na-Hurich, and I saw a woman there shooting arrow after arrow against the stars. At dawn she rose and passed away, like smoke, beyond those pale wandering fires.” [Illustration] RE-ISSUE OF Miss Fiona Macleod’s Stories Rearranged, and with Additional Tales VOL. I. _SPIRITUAL TALES_ Contents ST BRIDE OF THE ISLES. THE THREE MARVELS OF IONA. THE MELANCHOLY OF ULAD. ULA AND URLA. THE DARK NAMELESS ONE. THE SMOOTHING OF THE HAND. THE ANOINTED MAN. THE HILLS OF RUEL. THE FISHER OF MEN. THE LAST SUPPER. THE AWAKENING OF ANGUS OGUE. VOL II. _BARBARIC TALES_ Contents THE SONG OF THE SWORD. THE FLIGHT OF THE CULDEES. MIRCATH. THE LAUGHTER OF THE QUEEN. THE HARPING OF CRAVETHEEN. AHEZ THE PALE. SILK O’ THE KINE. CATHAL OF THE WOODS. THE WASHER OF THE FORD. VOL III. _TRAGIC ROMANCES_ Contents MORAG OF THE GLEN. THE DÀN-NAN-RÒN. THE SIN-EATER. THE NINTH WAVE. THE JUDGMENT O’ GOD. GREEN BRANCHES. THE ARCHER. BY FIONA MACLEOD.