“I met her in the school before she got her governess.” “Oh, ay! they must be making the leddy of her; that was the spoiling of her mother before her. As if old Brooks could not be learning any woman enough schooling to carry on a career in a kitchen. And have you seen her elsewhere?” “I heard her once singing on her father’s vessel,” said Gilian. “She was singing!” cried the Cornal, standing to his feet and thumping the table till the glasses rang. “Has she that art of the devil too? Her mother had it; ay! her mother had it, and it would go to your head like strong drink. Would it not, Dugald? You know the dame I mean.” “It was very taking, her song,” said the General simply, playing with the empty glass, his eyes upon the table. “And what now did she sing? Would it be----” “It was ‘The Rover’ and ‘The Man with the Coat of Green,’” said Gilian in an eager recollection. “Man! did I not ken it?” cried the Cornal. “Oh! I kent it fine. ‘The Rover’ was her mother’s trump card. I never gave a curse for a tune, but she had a way of lilting that one that was wonderful.” “She had, that,” said the General, and he sighed. The room, it seemed to Gilian, was a vault, a cavern of melancholy, with only the flicker of the coal to light it up in patches. These old men sighing were its ghosts or hermits, and he himself a worldling fallen invisible among their spoken thoughts. To him the Cornal no longer spoke directly; he was thinking aloud the thoughts alike of the General and himself--the dreams, the actions, the joys, the bitterness of youth. He sat back in his chair, relaxed, his hand wrinkled and grey, with no lusty blood rushing any more under the skin; upon the arms his fingers beating tattoo for his past.