SON OF THE WIND
Amazing how still everything was! He heard only the chuckle of the water, the brittle crash of men's footsteps in the brush, and the pacing of the thing inside. That moved as if it never would be still again. Sometimes he saw it, a black bulk among the trees, then black and silver swinging through the moonlight space, to be swallowed again in trees. It was like a disappearing appearing form in a dream. It looked so improbable to him he half expected it must melt before his eyes, and change into something else. Then the moon set, and he no longer saw, only heard. Reality retreated further from him, and at rare intervals when the sound of the hoofs stopped, it seemed as though the horse must have vanished. At last the flood of night and magic ran out and left him with his captive, visible, real and still in his hands.
In his hands, not figuratively only, but in fact. Carron remembered for a long time the moment when he first touched the body which had appeared to him like a vision. It lost nothing in value, though he had proved it to be flesh, though he fastened it with ropes. Rather the value increased to him. For now he could see every detail of beauty and found them perfect—perfect proportion, form without a blemish, youth in the teeth, and lineage in the fierce, full eye. The inheritance from remote, illustrious
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