The White Wolf | Page 8

miracle can be aught but small."
She bowed herself over me. "Art dying, old friend? Look up and learn
that God, being Love, deserts not lovers."
Then she stooped and gathered, as I thought, a handful of snow from
the deck; but lo! when she pressed it to my lips, and I tasted, it was
heavenly manna.
And looking up past her face I saw the ribbons of the North Lights fade
in a great and wide sunlight, bathing the deck and my frozen limbs. Nor
did they feel it only, but on the wind came the noise of bergs rending,
springs breaking, birds singing, many and curious. And with that, as I
am a sinful man, I gazed up into green leaves; for either we had sailed
into Paradise or the timbers of the White Wolf were swelling with sap
and pushing forth bough upon bough. Yea, and there were roses at the
mast's foot, and my fingers, as I stretched them, dabbled in mosses.
While I lay there, breathing softly, as one who dreams and fears to
awake, I heard her voice talking among the noises of birds and brooks,
and by the scent it seemed to be in a garden; but whether it spake to me
or to Ebbe I knew not, nor cared. "The Lord is my Shepherd, and
guides me," it said, "wherefore I lack nothing. He maketh me to lie
down in green pastures: He leadeth me by comfortable streams: He
reviveth my soul. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow
of death, I will fear no harm: Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me."
But, a little after, I knew that the voice spake to my master, for it said:
"Let us go forth into the field, O beloved: let us lodge in the villages:
let us get up betimes to the vineyard and see if the vine have budded, if
its blossom be open, the pomegranates in flower. Even there will I give
thee my love." Then looking again I saw that the two had gone from me

and left me alone.
But, blessed be God, they took not away the vision, and now I know
certainly that it is no cheat. For here sit I, dipping my pen into the
unfrozen ink, and, when a word will not come, looking up into the
broad branches and listening to the birds till I forget my story. It is long
since they left me; but I am full fed, and the ship floats pleasantly.
After so much misery I am as one rocked on the bosom of God; and the
pine resin has a pleasant smell.
[1] The courtship of Ebbe, the poor esquire of Nebbegaard, and the
maiden Mette is a traditional tale of West Jutland. A version of it was
Englished by Thorpe from Carit Etlar's "_Eventyr og Folkesagen fra
Jylland_": but this, while it tells of Ebbe's adventures at the
"Bride-show," and afterwards at the hunting-party, contains no account
of the lovers' escape and voyage, or of the miracle which brought them
comfort at the last. Indeed, Master Kurt contradicts the common tale in
many ways, but above all in his ending, wherein (although he narrates a
miracle) I find him worthy of belief.

SINDBAD ON BURRATOR.
I heard this story in a farmhouse upon Dartmoor, and I give it in the
words of the local doctor who told it. We were a reading-party of three
undergraduates and a Christ Church don. The don had slipped on a
boulder, two days before, while fishing the river Meavy, and sprained
his ankle; hence Dr. Miles's visit. The two had made friends over the
don's fly-book and the discovery that what the doctor did not know
about Dartmoor trout was not worth knowing; hence an invitation to
extend his visit over dinner. At dinner the talk diverged from sport to
the ancient tin-works, stone circles, camps and cromlechs on the tors
about us, and from there to touch speculatively on the darker side of the
old religions: hence at length the doctor's story, which he told over the
pipes and whisky, leaning his arms upon the table and gazing at it
rather than at us, as though drawing his memories out of depths below
its polished surface.

It must be thirty--yes, thirty--years ago (he said) since I met the man,
on a bright November morning, when the Dartmoor hounds were
drawing Burrator Wood. Burrator House in those days belonged to the
Rajah Brooke--Brooke of Sarawak--who had bought it from Harry
Terrell; or rather it had been bought for him by the Baroness Burdett
Coutts and other admirers in England. Harry Terrell--a great sportsman
in his day--had been loth enough to part with it, and when the bargain
was first