Those were black days for the Chief of Cloy. His luck was broken and his love was lost.

By day he pondered, silent and heavy-eyed, asking no counsel now of any. For what good to set a man's wit against a fairy's? By night he still wandered abroad, for the habit had grown on him, and now he never slept under a roof.

One night he strayed up a narrow, narrow glen, a cleft for a mountain stream. The stream fell and foamed over the rock ledges, and deepened in the rock basins under the trees, and hushed itself in the darkness, and almost slept; then, at the broken edge, it stirred awake, and poured over, breaking on the wet, shining rocks in the moonlight. This was autumn, and the golden moon of October had risen out of the sea and was sailing softly and swiftly through the blue spaces of the sky; the soft, thin clouds gathered after in flocks and sailed yet swifter. Το Lara, when he lifted his eyes, from under the tangle of trees that waved out of their shadowy places into the moonshine, it seemed as if the tender little clouds might almost touch and tear, so low they sailed, so high was the wood overhead.

He walked in the darkness, and the sound of the great waterfall grew louder and louder through the trees by the head of the glen. He stood beneath it at last, and it poured down white and glistening in the moonlight; a strong flood, with a voice like soft thunder. Then Lara desired to stand behind the wall of falling water; and he climbed over the slippery black rocks, and leapt a chasm that opened at his feet, and felt his way into the hollow of the cliff, holding with bare fingers by a sharp ledge over his head. And at last he stood behind the waterfall.

He had stepped into the dark hollow cliff, and it was full of water-weeds and dripping ferns and long grasses, that grew away from the light, and waved from the weight of the falling water. And the falling water looked like a glowing veil, so clear and shining it fell, in a great curve that the moonlight pierced, and lit, and floated through and through.

Then Lara saw in the middle of the water smoke, as it rose and wreathed in the moonshine, a hundred rainbows faint and small, and bubbles of light that sailed up and down, and little water-fairies sitting in them, with folded wings; a whole fleet of fairies sailing. When the bubbles broke, they fell out, spread their little wings and sailed higher. In the foam they looked whiter than foam, and in the rainbows they looked like mother-o'-pearl, and through the water they dived like moonbeams.

Lara knew them, of course. They were water-fairies, no subjects to the Fairy King at Tievara; so they came out to play And they

by their own sweet will, at the full of the moon.

played till they were tired and drooping, and the moon went under a cloud. Then they all sank down softly to rest, and talked to each other in faint whispers, so that Lara had much ado to hear anything they said; and all the time the waterfall hummed in his ears.

Said one to another, in the merest breath of a voice—

'The Chief of Cloy has won but little-only a bride that never wakes!'

And the other replied—

'What hope for him? Who is to tell him that she will sleep for ever unless he lays the sprig of white heather in her hand, and draws out the golden pin that is hidden in her hair, and unties the seven knots that are tied in her silken girdle?—who is to tell him?' And they laughed airily and dived below.

But the Chief of Cloy sprang out from the hollow cavern, and shouted with a voice louder than the plunging waterfall. He dashed across the rocks; a dark shape vanished through the white water smoke and the rainbows, and a man rushed up the glen. There was a crashing sound among the trees, and then silence. Lara had swung himself up the last step by a roan tree, that grew with its foot in a rock; and as he sprang out of it the roan tree swayed and sighed, and all its crowns of red berries dipped down, shaking, and swung back again-and Lara was gone.

One whole day he ranged the moor and the mountain, and searched for the rare white heather.

The month was October, and the heather bloom was dead and brown; the soft bog-cotton had blown away, the mountain mosses were soaked and grey. In the water of the black, cold tarn the reeds stood up dry and rustling; and the strong, low grass turned red before it withered, and shivered on the edges of the pools. Lara wandered and searched.

One whole day he searched for it. The hour was late and the sun was sinking when he stood at last within the door of the low brown house, and at last at the feet of Ailish. Fairer than ever she lay, more fast asleep, white-robed and still. The light of the sunset was on her face. A great red sunset burned in the sky, and flamed out wide and wild. The old larch that grew before the western window hung its head in the light, and VOL. 84 (IV.-NEW SERIES). ΝΟ. 497.

3

stretched out heavy arms, fringed with darkness, to bar the burning out. But the red sky looked through the bars. And to Ailish, in a fairy sleep, the dark and the light were one.

Then the Chief of Cloy drew from his breast one sprig of white heather—a little sprig, and withered, for the flowers were closed and brown at the tips. He took one hand of Ailish in his own; and before he touched he did obeisance, for Lara was her true knight and noble of heart. He shut the white heather up within her cool, smooth fingers, and laying down her hand, he thought he heard her sigh.

Then Lara knelt by her side, and searched in the dark, soft folds of her hair, till he had found a long, golden pin hidden among them. He drew it out, and her dark hair fell thickly to the ground, and the golden pin slid from his fingers. He thought that in her sleep she smiled a very little. But the white lids lay over her eyes.

Then, breathless, he began to untie the knots in her twisted girdle of silk; and that was very difficult. There were seven knots, and as fast as he untied them they slipped through his fingers and coiled back into the same knots as before. But when the seventh knot was untied at last, he lifted his head and saw Ailish open her sweet grey eyes, that had been shut so long -and she looked at him.

Then Lara kissed her, and she remembered.

So the luck of the Chief of Cloy was broken; but his love was blest.

MOIRA O'NEILL.

N.B. The first idea of this story was something told me by a friend, who had read and forgotten it, from some book on Irish folk-lore with which I am not acquainted.

HOW THE STORIES COME.

FIFTEEN STATEMENTS OF FACT BY WRITERS OF FICTION.

'They evidently concluded that she was composing her story, for they stared at her with all their might, as if to discover how she did it.'-' Aunt Judy's Tales,' by Mrs. GATTY.

·WHEN you want to write a story, how do you begin?' is a question with which most authors are familiar. How you ought to begin, has been laid down in black and white by various novelists, whose own success in the trade gives them a right to advise their less fortunate brethren. Mr. Besant has laid down rules for young lady writers in the early pages of Atalanta. Anthony Trollope, we believe, made an intending contributor to his magazine work out a sketch of his proposed story chapter by chapter, beforehand, and has recorded his own belief in 'cobbler's wax,' the resolution to stick to his chair until his stipulated ten pages had been written. The journals of Sir Walter Scott also give some interesting details of the way in which some of his great works were produced, and, in the Author this spring, Mr. Cresswell gives extracts from the prefaces to his novels, being on the same point.*

It is characteristic of Sir Walter that he claims nothing for himself but laborious research. But, one cannot but think that the germs' of his masterpieces were among the unconsidered thoughts and dreams of boyhood, and. sprang from his native hills and rivers.

In the life of Mrs. Ewing, we see the delicate skill with which she produced her perfect results. We have read how Charles Dickens could only compose in the rush and hurry of life in London, and the correspondence between Wilkie Collins and himself, lately published in Harper's Magazine, drops many hints of the way in which he was in the habit of working.

In The Finest Story in the World, Mr. Rudyard Kipling

* Mr. Marion Crawford's 'The Three Fates' is an interesting contribution to this problem.

describes how a young city clerk once had a vision of a possible story, which, if he had ever written it, would have been 'the finest story in the world.' He saw in his mind's eye a galley of Greek slaves, complete in every detail, even to the sparkle of the sunlight through a hole in the ship's side, falling on the hands of the slave chained to the oar. Every one will remember the brilliant use made by Mr. Rudyard Kipling of this distinctness of visionary detail. But it occurred to the compiler of this article that, allowing for the probably superior intensity of Mr. Kipling's inspirations to those of one of the harmless ladies, who, as Mr. Besant says in the Author, produce harmless fiction for the benefit of harmless members of their own sex, the kind of experience was not unique. That sunlight, glittering through a definite hole, on a definite spot, while the author of the story did not know how it got there, recalled other visions, not perhaps so dissimilar to this one as the result, which their 'percipient' was afterwards enabled to produce, unfortunately must be to Mr. Kipling's workmanship. In fact, it seemed that an experience of the author's own had probably suggested the phenomenon, to which he gives a theoretical explanation, and that this phenomenon was not so uncommon as the genius which so made use of it. We therefore sent to a considerable number of well-known authors a set of questions, begging them to answer them in accordance with their own consciousness, and not asking them to settle metaphysical points as to previous incarnations, double personalities, or 'sub-liminal consciousness.'

The answers received have come from writers of varied degrees of success, some being much higher on the ladder of fame than others, of very different styles and of different generations, but all may fairly say that they have made public use of the inspirations accorded to them. Fifteen sets of answers lie before us, in every variety of hand-writing and of very different length. They have been numbered at hap-hazard, which numbers do not correspond with the alphabetical list of names at the close.*

We do not wish to give ourselves away' to the public to the extent of owning to our several experiences, but the following account of them may be of general interest.

The first question set was:

'What is the "bacillus" or germ of a story? Does it come to you in the form of a picture, situation, problem, or in any other way?'

* See end of Church History Comment.