Read "The Far Islands" by John Buchan online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
-"Lady Alice, Lady Louise, Between the wash of the tumbling seas--".
When Bran the Blessed, as the story goes, followed the W white bird on the Last. Questing, knowing that return was not for him, he gave gifts to his followers. To Heliodorus he gave the gift of winning speech, and straightway the man went south to the Italian seas, and, becoming a scholar, left many descendants who sat in the high places of the Church. To Raymond he gave his steel battle-axe, and bade him go out to the warrior's path and, hew his way to a throne; which the man forthwith accomplished, and became an ancestor in the fourth degree of the first king of Scots. But to Colin, the youngest and the dearest, he gave no gift, whispering only a word in his ear and laying a finger on his eyelids. Yet Colin was satisfied, and he alone of the three, after their master's going, remained on that coast of rock and heather.