“You sing--you sing--you sing like the wind in the trees,” said the seaman, stirred to unaccustomed passion. The little cabin, when she was done, seemed to shrink from the limitless width of the world to the narrowness of a cell, and Gilian sat stunned. He had followed her song in a rapture she had seen and delighted in for all the apparent surrender of her emotion; she saw now the depth to which she had touched him, and was greatly pleased with this conquest of her art. Clearly he was no common Glen Aray boy, so she sang one or two more songs to show the variety of her budget, and the tears he could not restrain were her sweetest triumph. At last, “I must be going,” said she. “Good-bye, Duncan, and do not be forgetting my beads.” Then she dashed on deck, waiting no answer to that or to the friendly nod of parting to Gilian. “Now isn’t she a wonder?” asked the seaman, amused, astonished, proud. “Did you ever hear singing like it?” “I never did,” said Gilian. “Ah, she is almost as fine as a piper!” said the seaman. “She comes down here every time I am at the quay and she will be singing here till the timbers strain themselves to listen.” “I like her very much,” said Gilian. “Of course you do,” the seaman cried, with a thump of his hard hand on the edge of his bunk, “and would it not be very curious indeed if you did not like her? I have heard women sing in many places--bold ones in Amsterdam, and the shy dancers of Bermuda, but never her equal, and she only a child. How she does it is the beat of me.” “I know,” said Gilian, reddening a little to say so much to the seaman, but emboldened by the shadows he sat among. “The birds sing that way and the winds and the tide, because they have the feeling of it and they must. And when she sings she is ‘The Rover,’ or she is ‘The Man with the Green Coat.’” “Indeed, and it is very easy too when you explain,” said the seaman, whether in earnest or in fun the boy could not make out “She is the strange one anyway, and they say General Turner, who’s her father and the man this ship belongs to, is not knowing very well what to make of her. What is the matter with you?” For the boy’s face was crimson as he looked up the quay after the girl from the deck where now they stood. “Oh,” said Gilian, “I was just wondering if that would be the family the Paymaster is not friendly with.” The seaman laughed. “That same!” said he. “And are you in the family feud too? If that is so you’ll hear little of Miss Nan’s songs, I’m thinking, and that is the folly of feuds. If I was you I would say nothing about the _Jean_, and the lass who sang in her.” CHAPTER VIII--THE SHERIFF’S SUPPER PARTY But Gilian was soon to hear the lass again.