“I was in the town with uncle,” she said, “and I heard you were sailing away to-morrow, and I thought I would come and say good-bye.” She spoke as prettily in her Gaelic as in her English. “Ah, _mo run_,” said the seaman, putting out his arms as to embrace her, “am not I pleased that you should have Black Duncan in your mind so much as to come and say ‘fair wind to your sail’?” “And you’ll bring me the beads next time?” she said hastily. “That will I,” said he, smiling; “but you must sing me a song now or I might forget them.” “Oh, I’ll sing if----.” She paused and looked doubtfully at Gilian, who was still open-mouthed at her breezy vehemence. “Never mind the boy,” said the seaman, stretching himself to enjoy the music at his ease; “if you make it ‘The Rover’ he will understand.” The afternoon was speeding. The sun had passed the trees that round the Tolbooth walls and a beam from his majesty came boldly into the den by the companion. It struck a slanting passage on the floor and revealed the figure of a girl at her ease dangling her feet upon a water anker with her hair a flood of spate-brown fallen back upon its fastening band. And the boy saw her again as it were quite differently from before, still the robust woman-child, but rich, ripe, blooded at the plump inviting lip, warm at the throbbing neck. About her hung a searching odour that overcame the common and vulgar odours of the ship, its bilge, its tar, its oak-bark tan, its herring scale, an odour he knew of woods in the wet spring weather. It made him think of short grasses and the dewdrop glittering in the wet leaf; then the sky shone blue against a tremble of airy leaf. The birch, the birch, he had it! And having it he knew the secret of the odour. She had already the woman’s trick of washing her hair in the young birch brewings. “I will sing ‘The Rover’ and I will sing ‘The Man with the Coat of Green,’” said she, with the generosity of one with many gifts. And she started upon her ditty. She had a voice that as yet was only in its making; it was but a promise of the future splendour, yet to Gilian, the hearer, it brought a new and potent joy. With ‘The Rover’ he lived in the woods, and set foot upon foreign wharves; ‘The Man with the Coat of Green’ had his company upon the morning adventures in the islands of fairydom. It was then, as in after years she was the woman serious, when her own songs moved her, with her dalliance and indifference gone. A tear trembled at her eyes at the trials of the folk she sang.