Page:Georges Eekhoud - Escal Vigor, a novel.djvu/186

162 panting, or the heaving of a lover consumed with desire.

At the sight of a ruddy cloud of fantastic shape, the friends remembered the story of the Fire Shepherd celebrated in all the plains of the North. Kehlmark kept silence for some time, he seemed to be revolving some serious idea in connection with these terrifying beliefs. Since he had known him, the young Govaertz had never seen him with so gloomy, sorrow-stricken an aspect.

"You are suffering, master?" he said.

"No, dear boy; an unpleasant recollection; it will pass. This evening perhaps, the air is extremely heady; dost thou not find it so? Dost know the real story of the Fire Shepherd, whereof thou spakest just now. I have every reason to believe that it is wrongly told. I think I can suggest a more correct version. I have gathered their story from these haunted landscapes on evenings like this, especially those bits of heather where melancholy used to reign even more gloomily than elsewhere, where plain and horizon distilled the essences of their heavy sadness and shady sleep. Certain details of the landscape contract, as thou wilt have noticed in keeping thy sheep, a poignant