The wind sang to the falling tide, “Coo sha coo! coo sha coo! Now I fold my wings wide, Coo sha coo sha coo! Sleep beneath the folded wing, Dream and murmur while I sing, Coo sha coo sha coo sha! Coo sha coo sha coo!” The wind sang to the rising sea, “U la hu! u la hu! Come and fly abroad with me, U la hu la hu! Toss your hair so wild and gray, Beat the rocks with hands of spray, U la hu la hu la! U la hu la hu!” CHAPTER VI. THE NEW TEACHING. AND now, this Sunday morning, Isla stood on the rocks, and looked at the young preacher, as she came toward her. “Good morning!” said the preacher, feeling curiously embarrassed under the quiet, straightforward gaze of the island girl. “I saw you at the service this morning; but I missed you when it was over, and your friend here guided me to you.” She turned to look at Joe, but he had disappeared. “Yes,” said Isla Heron, “I was there. I was coming to look for you, too. I wanted to ask you if something you said was true.” The preacher smiled. “I hope I said nothing that was untrue,” she said. Isla looked up with a startled glance. “Oh, yes!” she said. “Things that are not true here, anyhow. I don’t know how it may be over on the main. But—what I wanted to ask you—you read something from the Bible,—‘The tongue of the dumb shall sing.’ What did you mean by that?” The preacher repeated, slowly, that she might have time to think a little. “‘Then shall the lame man leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing.’ Yes, that is a beautiful passage; you will find it in Isaiah, the thirty-fifth chapter.” “But is it true?” Isla persisted. “Did they do it then, or can they do it now?” “I do not understand you,” the preacher said, gently. “It is a prophecy of the flourishing of Christ’s kingdom.” “Will he make dumb people speak? that is all I want to know,” said Isla. “My little brother is dumb, and I would do anything in the world to make him speak. If that is true, tell me how it is done.” The preacher looked at her very tenderly. “Let us sit down here, my dear,” she said; “and tell me about your little brother.” They sat down on a warm brown stone, and Isla told the story of her little Jacob; of her father’s death two years before, and of her mother’s fading away through the year, and following him before another spring came. “So now there are just the two of us,” she said. “Just me and my little Jacob. And if I could make him hear and speak, I would be willing to die myself.” “He can never hear!” the preacher said. “These are not the days of miracles, and we have no assurance that we may look for them, though signs and wonders are all about us. But truly a wonder has been wrought in these very days; and it may be that the child can be taught to speak, and to read by the lips what others say to him.” She told Isla, in a few words, of the new teaching of the deaf, and the girl listened with her whole soul.