Then they told him that this woman was the wife of Rainbow Pete. "Aha," he said, "but, my friends, a rainbow is not for very long. It is beautiful, but look, it vanishes in air." Was he afraid, without saying so? That I can not tell you. Still he stayed on Mushrat. He was the destroyer of his countrymen. They blew themselves to pieces in his service, coming in great numbers when he crooked his finger. Then my friend, he made himself noticeable to that dark woman. He took his instrument to the ledge and sang to her. This I know from Willis Countryman who lived near that place. He told me that the man sang in the night a soft song and that the woman listened. Ay, she listened in the window, looking down into the valley where Throat River went roaring and the great Falls were like rags waving in the dark. Ay, she sat watching the River come out of the North, where Rainbow Pete was cruising after gold. This Willis Countryman I'm telling you about was a fine man in his old age for reading. Oh, it was not easy talking to the man, with his muttering and muttering and his chin down firm intil the book. When he had his shack on Mouse Island the fire jumped over from the wind-rows they were burning in a right of way. What next? Disn't he put his furs in a canoe to sink in the lee of the island, and there he went on reading in the night with his chin out of water, and the light from his house blazing and lighting up the book in his fist. Oh my, he was great for reading, Willis. Well, here, one night he came telling me about some queer women on a beach, singing. "Ay! It was impossible to keep away from them while they were at it. What is their name again?" He made a prolonged effort to remember, sighed painfully, fixed his gaze. I brought him back as if from a fit of epilepsy by the interjection of the word, "Siren." "Ay," he said, slowly and sadly. "The men put wax in their ears--" Now mark this. The day after I was hearing this of Willis, the woman put her hand on my arm as I was passing the ledge. "You are a friend of my husband's," she whispered to me. "What now?" I said. "Will he come back to me, I wonder?" she said, looking in the valley. "This is a long business, searching for gold," I went muttering. "No man can say I have been unfaithful to him," she said to me, the fierce woman, breathing through her teeth. "I have been speaking to no man." "This is certain," I said to her. "If he dis not come according to my dream I am a lost woman, by this way of going on," she said to me. How is this? There were tears flowing on the face, while she was telling me she was bewitched by the singing of Pal Yachy. Oh, at first she would just lie listening there, but now the man with his sweet voice was drawing her from her bed, to come putting aside the scented bottles and leaning in the window.