The King’s Grave
It was at the time of year when the heather is red. It grew over the sand-hills in thick clumps. From low treelike stems close-growing green branches raised their hardy evergreen leaves and unfading flowers. They seemed not to be made of ordinary, juicy flower substance, but of dry, hard scales. They were very insignificant in size and shape; nor was their fragrance of much account. Children of the open moors, they had not unfolded in the still air where lilies open their alabaster petals; nor did they grow in the rich soil from which roses draw nourishment for their swelling crowns. What made them flowers was really their color, for they were glowing red. They had received the color-giving sunshine in plenty. They were no pallid cellar growth; the blessed gaiety and strength of health lay over all the blossoming heath.
The heather covered the bare fields with its red mantle up to the edge of the wood. There, on a gently sloping ridge, stood some ancient, half ruined stone cairns; and however closely the heather tried to creep to these, there were always rents in its web, through which were visible great, flat rocks, folds in the mountain’s own rough skin. Under the biggest of these piles rested an old king, Atle by name. Under the others slumbered those of his warriors who had fallen when the great battle raged on the moor. They had lain there now so long that the fear and respect of death had departed from their graves. The path ran between their resting-places. The wanderer by night never thought to look whether forms wrapped in mist sat at midnight on the tops of the cairns staring in silent longing at the stars.
It was a glittering morning, dewy and warm. The hunter who had been out since daybreak had thrown himself down in the heather behind King Atle’s pile. He lay on his back and slept. He had dragged his hat down over his eyes; and under his head lay his leather game-bag, out of which protruded a hare’s long ears and the bent tail-feathers of a blackcock. His bow and arrows lay beside him.
From out of the wood came a girl with a bundle in her hand. When she reached the flat rock between the piles of stones, she thought what a good place it would be to dance. She was seized with an ardent desire to try. She laid her bundle on the heather and began to dance quite alone. She had no idea that a man lay asleep behind the king’s cairn.
The hunter still slept. The heather showed burning red against the deep blue of the sky. An anthill stood close beside the sleeper. On it lay a piece of quartz, which sparkled as if it had wished to set fire to all the old stubble of the heath. Above the hunter’s head the blackcock feathers spread out like a plume, and their iridescence shifted from deep purple to steely blue. On the unshaded part of his face the burning sunshine glowed. But he did not open his eyes to look at the glory of the morning.
In the meanwhile the girl continued to dance, and whirled about so eagerly that the blackened moss which had collected in the unevennesses of the rocks flew about her. An old, dry fir root, smooth and gray with age, lay upturned among the heather. She took it and whirled about with it. Chips flew out from the mouldering wood. Centipedes and earwigs that had lived in the crevices scurried out head over heels into the luminous air and bored down among the roots of the heather.
When the swinging