Where there were
trees she went to them and whispered, and they sang the arboreal
song that only trees can hear, and the green buds came peeping out as
stars while yet it is twilight, secretly one by one. She went to gardens
and awaked from dreaming the warm maternal earth. In little patches
bare and desolate she called up like a flame the golden crocus, or its
purple brother like an emperor's ghost. She gladdened the graceless
backs of untidy houses, here with a weed, there with a little grass.
She said to the air, "Be joyous."
Children began to know that daisies blew in unfrequented corners.
Buttonholes began to appear in the coats of the young men. The work
of Spring was accomplished.
HOW THE ENEMY CAME TO THLUNRANA
It had been prophesied of old and foreseen from the ancient days that
its enemy would come upon Thlunrana. And the date of its doom was
known and the gate by which it would enter, yet none had prophesied
of the enemy who he was save that he was of the gods though he dwelt
with men. Meanwhile Thlunrana, that secret lamaserai, that chief
cathedral of wizardry, was the terror of the valley in which it stood
and of all lands round about it. So narrow and high were the windows
and so strange when lighted at night that they seemed to regard men
with the demoniac leer of something that had a secret in the dark.
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