“I am not afraid of being alone,” she answered, smiling; “but let it be as you like, Mr. Monk—at any rate, until you grow tired of us, and change your mind.” Then Mr. Fregelius told Morris what he had not yet heard—that when it became known that they had deserted Stella, leaving her to drown in the sinking ship, the attentions of the inhabitants of Monksland to the cowardly foreign sailors became so marked that their consul at Northwold had thought it wise to get them out of the place as quickly as possible. While this story was in progress Stella left the room to speak to the nurse who had been engaged to look after her father at night. Afterwards, at the request of Mr. Fregelius, Morris told the tale of his daughter’s rescue. In the course of it he mentioned how he found her standing on the deck of the sinking ship and singing a Norse song, which she had informed him was an ancient death-dirge. The old clergyman turned his head and sighed. “What is the matter?” asked Morris. “Nothing, Mr. Monk; only that song is unlucky in my family, and I hoped that she had forgotten it.” Morris looked at him blankly. “You don’t understand—how should you? But, Mr. Monk, there are strange things and strange people in this world, and I think that my daughter Stella is one of the strangest of them. Fey like the rest—only a fey Norse woman would sing in such a moment.” Again Morris looked at him. “Oh, it is an old northern term, and means foreseeing, and foredoomed. To my knowledge her grandmother, her mother, and her sister, all three of them, sang or repeated that song when in some imminent danger to their lives, and all three of them were dead within the year. The coincidence is unpleasant.” “Surely,” said Morris, with a smile, “you who are a clergyman, can scarcely believe in such superstition?” “No, I am not superstitious, and I don’t believe in it; but the thing recalls unhappy memories. They have been death-lovers, all of them. I never heard of a case of one of that family who showed the slightest fear at the approach of death; and some have greeted it with eagerness.” “Well,” said Morris, “would not that mean only that their spiritual sight is a little clearer than ours, and their faith a little stronger? Theoretically, we should all of us wish to die.” “Quite so, yet we are human, and don’t. But she is safe, thanks to you, who but for you would now be gone. My head is still weak from that blow—you must pay no attention to me. I think that I hear Stella coming; you will say nothing to her—about that song, I mean—will you? We never talk of it in my family.”