The Short Stories of John Buchan (Complete Collection). Buchan John

Table of Contents

       The Ballad for Grey Weather

       Prester John (Short Story)

       At the Article of Death

       Politics and the May-Fly

       A Reputation

       A Journey of Little Profit

       At the Rising of the Waters

       The Earlier Affection

       The Black Fishers

       Summer Weather

       The Oasis in the Snow

       The Herd of Standlan

       Streams of Water in the South

       The Moor-Song

       Comedy in the Full Moon

      THE BALLAD FOR GREY WEATHER

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      Cold blows the drift on the hill,

       Sere is the heather,

       High goes the wind and shrill,

       Mirk is the weather.

       Stout be the front I show,

       Come what the gods send!

       Plaided and girt I go

       Forth to the world’s end.

      My brain is the stithy of years,

       My heart the red gold

       Which the gods with sharp anguish and tears

       Have wrought from of old.

       In the shining first dawn o’ the world

       I was old as the sky,—

       The morning dew on the field

       Is no younger than I.

      I am the magician of life,

       The hero of runes;

       The sorrows of eld and old strife

       Ring clear in my tunes.

       The sea lends her minstrel voice,

       The storm-cloud its grey;

       And ladies have wept at my notes,

       Fair ladies and gay.

      My home is the rim of the mist,

       The ring of the spray,

       The hart has his corrie, the hawk has her nest,

       But I—the Lost Way.

       Come twilight or morning, come winter or spring,

       Come leisure, come war,

       I tarry not, I, but my burden I sing

       Beyond and afar.

      I sing of lost hopes and old kings,

       And the maids of the past.

       Ye shiver adread at my strings,

       But ye hear them at last.

       I sing of vain quests and the grave,—

       Fools tremble, afraid.

       I sing of hot life, and the brave

       Go forth, undismayed.

      I sleep by the well-head of joy

       And the fountain of pain.

       Man lives, loves, and fights, and then is not,—

       I only remain.

       Ye mock me and hold me to scorn,—

       I seek not your grace.

       Ye gird me with terror—forlorn,

       I laugh in your face.

      —April 1, 1898.

      PRESTER JOHN

       (SHORT STORY)

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      Or he, who in the wilderness, where no man travels and few may live, dwelled in all good reason and kindness. —Chronicle of S. Jean de Remy.

      The exact tale of my misadventure on that September day I can scarcely now remember. One thing I have clear in my mind—the weather. For it was in that curious time of year when autumn’s caprices reach their height either in the loveliest of skies or a resolute storm. Now it was the latter, and for two days the clear tints of the season had been drowned in monotonous grey. The mighty hill-streams came down like fields in breadth, and when the wind ceased for a time, the roar of many waters was heard in the land. Ragged leaves blocked the path, heather and bracken were sodden as the meadow turf, and the mountain backs were now shrouded to their bases in mist, and now looming ominous and near in a pause of the shifting wrack.

      In the third day of the weather I was tempted by the Evil One and went a- fishing. The attempt was futile, and I knew it, for the streams were boiling like a caldron, and no man may take fish in such a water. Nevertheless, the blustering air and the infinite distance of shadowy hill-top took hold on me so that I could not choose but face the storm. And, once outside, the north wind slashed and buffeted me till my breath was almost gone; and when I came to the river’s edge, I looked down on an acre of churning foam and mountainous wave.

      Now, the way of the place is this. The Gled comes down from flat desolate moorlands to the narrower glen, which in turn opens upon the great river of the country-side. On the left it is bounded by gentle slopes of brown heather, which sink after some score of miles into the fields of a plain; but to the right there lies a tract of fierce country, rugged and scarred with torrents; while at the back of all rise the pathless hills which cradle the Callowa and the Aller. It is a land wild on the fairest summer noon, but in the autumn storms it is black as a pit and impregnable as a fortress.

      As ill-fortune would have it, I raised a good fish in my first pool, ran it, and lost it in a tangle of driftwood. What with the excitement and the stinging air my blood grew high, I laughed in the face of the heavens, and wrestled in the gale’s teeth for four miles upstream. It was the purest madness, for my casting-line was blown out of the water at almost every gust, and never another fish looked near me. But the keenness abode with me, and so it happened that about mid-day I stood at the foot of the glen whence the Cauldshaw Burn pours its troubled waters to the Gled.

      Something in the quiet strength of the great brown flood attracted me against my better judgment. I persuaded myself that in this narrower vale there must be some measure of shelter, and that in its silent pools there were chances of fish. So, with a fine