Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/413

 the unseen genius of the Austral wild—no malign, amorphous terror, but a benignant sylvan deity—might peer through the forest leaves and smile wonderingly at the fantasies of the 'coming race.'

Hark! Is that the grey owl? With strange, unmelodious cry he stirs the stillness. I turn to watch him, is he swims the night air with moveless wing—dropping, like the emissary of an evil witch, on the willow branch between me and the moon. Bird of ill omen, thou hast shattered my dream! The Palace has disappeared, the lutes are silent, the fair company dispersed; the nightingale, that sang of 'love, and love's sharp woe,' is mute for another century. Only the faint plash of the river, rippling over its sand-bars; only the mountain shadows beneath the waning, gibbous moon; only the unbroken silence of the Austral woodland, brooding, majestic, as of one watching through the eternities for the birth of a nation. 'The light that never was on sea or land' fades rapidly, and with the sigh that greets the evanishing of the undersoul's fair fantasies I seek my couch.

An early réveille comes Duty, with reason-compelling Circumstance; a deputation demanding answers to questions, of which due notice has been given. 'Enterprises of great pith and moment are imminent.' We must to horse and away, not betaking ourselves to pilgrim's staff, as is customary with us; time permits not. What bard—was it the sweet singer of a Brisbane Reverie, 'The Complaint of the Doves,' the laureate of Royalty (black), the minstrel of the desert steed, that in a lighter hour proclaimed—

We are not journeying quite so far as the stanniferous stronghold; yet is our errand not unconnected with the metal that the Silures and Phœnicians delved for in Cornwall long before Julius Cæsar, without reference to the susceptibilities of king, kaiser, or chancellor, established his protectorate of Britain.

The stern Roman, the world's master, has vanished from among the tribes of men. His descendant, an ignoble fainéant, a stolid peasant, or a hired model, sells the right to mould