Still they floated on with the receding tide, its low washing against the sides of their boat filling up the pauses of the music. The burning red and gold of the sky cooled into the mellower tints of twilight, and the pale curve of the young moon shone with increasing lustre. Jeannie fell asleep, her head upon her sister's lap; the dumb boy sat motionless as stone, his dark eyes fixed on the moon; there seemed some spell upon the little party. Boat after boat passed them, almost noiselessly, for far into the clear evening went the tones of the singer's voice, and the dullest hearer could not withhold the tribute of admiring silence until beyond its reach. And Sarah, happy in the strange, restful languor that locked her senses to all except the blessed present, dreamed on, the music but a part of her ideal world, this new and beautiful life. Into it stole presently a theme of sadness, a strain of grief, a heart-cry, that, ere she was aware, wrung her own heart-strings with anguish. "The long, long weary day Is passed in tears away, And still at evening I am weeping. When from my window's height I look out on the night, I am still weeping, My lone watch keeping. "When I, his truth to prove, Would trifle with my love, He'd say, 'For me thou wilt be weeping, When, at some future day, I shall be far away; Thou wilt be weeping, Thy lone watch keeping.' "Alas! if land or sea Had parted him from me, I would not these sad tears be weeping; But hope he'd come once more, And love me as before; And say, 'Cease weeping, Thy lone watch keeping.' "But he is dead and gone, Whose heart was mine alone, And now for him I'm sadly weeping. His face I ne'er shall see, And naught is left to me But bitter weeping, My lone watch keeping." If ever a pierced and utterly hopeless soul poured forth its plaint in musical measure, it was in the wondrously simple and unspeakably plaintive air to which these words are set. There breathes in it a spirit wail so mournfully sincere that one recognizes its sob in the very chords of the accompaniment. The mere murmur of the melody, were no words uttered, tells the story of grieving desolation. Sarah did not move or speak, yet upon her enchanted ground a cloud had fallen. She saw the high casement and its tearful gazer into the night, a night not of music, and moonlight, and love, but chill, and wet, and dreary. Rain dripped from eaves and trees; stone steps and pavements caught a ghastly gleam from street lamps; save that sorrowful watcher, there was no living creature abroad or awake. She grew cold and sick with looking into those despairing eyes; the gloom, the loneliness, the woe of that vigil became her own, and her heart sank swooning beneath the burden.