'My husband, Methusalem, my dear husband, with his only brother, began to pay for that wickedness. They were capsized crossing to St. Mary's, and drowned. If I had thought what was going to happen I would have taken the bag and walked through all England looking for him until I had found him. Yes--if it took me fifty years. But I knew nothing. I thought our happiness would last for ever. Five-and-twenty years after, my son, Emanuel, was cast away in the Bristol Channel piloting a vessel. They struck on Steep Holm in a fog. And your own father, Armorel, was drowned with his wife and three boys on their way home from a wedding-feast at St. Agnes.' Here her voice dropped, and Roland heard the concluding bars of 'Dissembling Love,' which Armorel was playing with quite uncommon tenderness. When she stopped, Justinian gave her no rest. '"Blue Petticoats,"' he commanded. Armorel again obeyed. Then the old lady went back in memory to the days of her girlhood--now so long ago. Nowhere now can one find an old lady who will tell of her girlish days when the century was not yet arrived at the age of ten. 'We shall dance to-night,' she said, 'on Bryher Green. My boy will be there. We shall dance together. John Tryeth from Samson will play his fiddle. We shall dance "Prince Rupert's March" and "Blue Petticoats" and "Dissembling Love." The Ensign from the garrison is coming and the Deputy Commissary. They will drink my health. But they shall not have me for partner. My boy will be there--my own boy--the handsomest man on all the islands, though he is so black. That's the Spaniard in him. His mother was a Mureno--Honor Mureno, the last of the Murenos. He has got the old Spaniard's sword still. It's the Spanish blood. It gives my boy his black eyes and his black hair; it makes his cheeks swarthy; and it makes him proud and hot-tempered. I like a man to be quick and proud if he's strong and brave as well. When I have sons, the Lord make them all like their father!' So she went on talking of her lover. Armorel stopped and looked again at her master. '"The Chirping of the Lark,"' he said. Armorel began this tune. It is of an artificial character, lending itself less readily than the rest to emotion; the composer called it 'The Chirping of the Lark' because he wanted a title: it resembles the song of that warbler in no single particular. But it changed the old lady's current of thought.