The Heaven Tree [antikvár]

The angel, eternally alighting with arched wings and delicate, stretched feet, spread his hands palms outwards towards the radianee, and bowed in ceremonious humility the youthful, narrow head> with its long gold hair still erect and quivering from his flight. The shuddering hum of his great wings hung perpetually upon the astonished air, for ever stilling and never stilled. His eyes, half-averted from the unbearable brightness, had themselves a brilliance not to be borne, and his face was as taut and fierce as the body arrested for ever in the instant of alighting, straining downwards from breast to loin to thigh to instep, silver sinews braced and quivering under the frozen turmoil of the gilded robe. He touched the earth with long, naked, shapely feet, and the earth gave forth a brazen cry, and the tremulous air vibrated üke a bowstring along the descending arc of his passage from heaven. In the shadowy spaces above him the creator bent his head to look upon his work, and saw that it was good Ebrard came to fetch them home from Shrewsbury on a green morning somé days after Easter, with his fledgling knighthood glossy and stiff upon him like new clothes, and three armed grooms at his back to keep him in good conceit of himself. They waited at the gatehouse to saiute him dutifully as he dismounted, Harry with a brotherly kiss, Adam with a deep reverence. And Abbot Hugh de Lacy came limping through the bustle of the great court to bless their departing. He was lame of the left leg from a certain hunting affray in his youth, when a wounded boar had brought down both him and his horse, and the moist spring season al ways gnawed hard at the place where his bones had knit awry. He had taken boar and wolf and deer in his time, and not always with license; but that was before he donned the cowl and fixed his sights upon the mitre. He held them before him by the shoulders, and: 'Well, boys,' said he, 'you are in a fair way to be men. Keep fast what you have