The Dark Star

They stood looking across the pasture, where a little girl in a pink

gingham dress lingered watching them, evidently lured by her curiosity

from the old house at the crossroads just beyond.

Jim Neeland, still red with mortification, took the big cock-grouse

from the dog which brought it--a tender-mouthed, beautifully trained

Belton, who stood with his feathered offering in his jaws, very

serious, very proud, awaiting praise from the Neelands, father and

son.

Neeland senior "drew" the bird and distributed the sacrifice

impartially between both dogs--it being the custom of the country.

Neeland junior broke his gun, replaced the exploded shell, content

indeed with his one hundred per cent performance.

"Better run over and speak to the little girl, Jim," suggested old

Dick Neeland, as he motioned the dogs into covert again.

So Jim ran lightly across the stony, clover-set ground to where the

little girl roamed along the old snake fence, picking berries

sometimes, sometimes watching the sportsmen out of shy, golden-grey

eyes.

"Little girl," he said, "I'm afraid the shot from my gun came rattling

rather close to you that time. You'll have to be careful. I've noticed

you here before. It won't do; you'll have to keep out of range of

those bushes, because when we're inside we can't see exactly where

we're firing."

The child said nothing. She looked up at the boy, smiled shyly, then,

with much composure, began her retreat, not neglecting any tempting

blackberry on the way.

The sun hung low over the hazy Gayfield hills; the beeches and oaks of

Mohawk County burned brown and crimson; silver birches supported their

delicate canopies of burnt gold; and imperial white pines clothed hill

and vale in a stately robe of green.

Jim Neeland forgot the child--or remembered her only to exercise

caution in the Brookhollow covert.

The little girl Ruhannah, who had once fidgeted with prickly heat in

her mother's arms outside the walls of Trebizond, did not forget this

easily smiling, tall young fellow--a grown man to her--who had come

across the pasture lot to warn her.

But it was many a day before they met again, though these two also had

been born under the invisible shadow of the Dark Star. But the shadow

of Erlik is always passing like swift lightning across the Phantom

Planet which has fled the other way since Time was born.

Allahou Ekber, O Tchinguiz Khagan!

A native Mongol missionary said to Ruhannah's father: "As the chronicles of the Eighurs have it, long ago there fell metal

from the Black Racer of the skies; the first dagger was made of it;

and the first image of the Prince of Darkness. These pass from Kurd to

Cossack by theft, by gift, by loss; they pass from nation to nation by

accident, which is Divine design.