Mufti Part 37

EPILOGUE

A grey mist was blowing up the valley from Cromarty Firth. It hid the low hills that flanked the little branch railway line, slowly and imperceptibly drifting and eddying through the brown trees on their slopes. Down in London a world had gone mad--but the mist took no heed of such foolishness. Lines of men and women, linked arm-in-arm, were promenading Piccadilly to celebrate the End of the Madness; shrieking parties were driving to Wimbledon, or Limehouse, or up and down Bond Street in overweighted taxis, but the mist rolled on silently and inexorably. It took account of none of these things.

Since the beginning a mist such as this one had drifted up the valley from the open sea; until the end it would continue. . . . It was part of the Laws of Nature, and the man who watched it coming turned with a little shudder.

In front of him, the moors stretched brown and rugged till they lost themselves in the snow-capped hills. Here and there the bogland showed a darker tint, and at his feet, cupped out in the smooth greystone, lay a sheet of water. It was dark and evil-looking, and every now and then a puff of wind eddied down from the hills and ruffled the smooth surface.

The colours of the moors were sombre and dark; and below the snows far away in the heart of Ross-s.h.i.+re it seemed to the man who watched with brooding eyes that it was as the blackness of night. A deserted dead world, with a cold grey shroud, to hide its nakedness.

He s.h.i.+vered again, and wiped the moisture from his face, while a terrier beside him crept nearer for comfort.

And then came the change. Swiftly, triumphantly, the sun caught the mist and rolled it away. One by one the rugged lines of hills came into being again--one by one they shouted, "We are free, behold us. . . ."

The first was a delicate brown, and just behind it a little peak of violet loomed up. Away still further the browns grew darker, more rich--the violets became a wondrous purple. And the black underneath the snows seemed to be of the richest velvet.

The pond at the man's feet glinted a turquoise blue; the bogland shone silver in the sunlight. And then, to crown it all, the smooth snow slopes in the distance glowed pink and orange, where before they had been white and cold.

For Life had come to a Land of Death.

Gradually the brooding look on the man's face faded, a gleam of whimsical humour shone in his eyes. He took an old briar out of his pocket and commenced to fill it; and soon the blue smoke was curling lazily upwards into the still air. But he still stood motionless, staring over the moors, his hands deep in the pockets of the old shooting coat he wore.

Suddenly he threw back his head and laughed; then almost unconsciously he stretched out his arms to the setting sun.

"Thank you," he cried, and with a swift whirring of wings two grouse rose near by and shot like brown streaks over the silver tarn. "Sooner or later the mist always goes. . . ."

He tapped out the ashes of his pipe, and put it back in his pocket.

And as he straightened himself up, of a sudden it seemed to the man that the mountains and the moors, the tarn and the bogland approved of the change in him, and, finding him worthy, told him their message.

"The Sun will always triumph," they cried in a mighty chorus. "Sooner or later the mist will always go."

For a s.p.a.ce the man stood there, while the sun, sinking lower and lower, bathed the world in glory. Then, he whistled. . . .

"Your last walk on the moors, Binks, old man, so come on. To-morrow we go back."

And with a terrier scurrying madly through the heather around him, the man strode forward.