It was Peggy’s habit to sing softly at her work; once in a while, in her gentlest mood, she chanted aloud a snatch of some old song. There was never but one song for a day, to be repeated over and over; and the better she was pleased with her conditions, the sadder was her strain. Now and then her old voice, weak and uncertain, but still unexpectedly beautiful, came back again so clear and true that the chattering girls themselves were hushed into listening. To-day the peace in her heart was such that she had been singing over and over, with plaintive cadences, a most mournful quatrain of ancient lines set to a still more ancient tune. It must have touched the chords of some inherited memory. "O Death, rock me asleep" sang Peggy dolefully;— "O Death, rock me asleep, Bring me to quiet rest; Let pass my weary, guiltless ghost Out of my care-full breast!" The girls had seldom heard their old tyrant forget herself and them so completely in her singing; they gave each other a sympathetic glance as she continued; the noisy shuttle subdued itself to the time and tune, and made a rude accompaniment. One might have the same feeling in listening to a thrush at nightfall as to such a natural song as this. At last the poignancy of feeling grew too great for even the singer herself, and she drew away from the spell of the music, as if she approached too near the sad reality of its first occasion. "My grandmother was said to have the best voice in these Piscataqua plantations, when she was young," announced Peggy with the tone of a friend. "My mother had a pretty voice, too, but ’t was a small voice, like mine. I ’m good as dumb beside either of them, but there is n’t no tune I ever heard that I can’t follow in my own head as true as a bird. This one was a verse my grandmother knew,—some days I think she sings right on inside of me,—but I forget the story of the song: she knew the old story of everything." Peggy was modest, but she had held her audience for once, and knew it. She stopped to tie a careful weaver’s knot in the warp, and adjust some difficulty of her pattern. Hitty Warren, who was spinning by the door, trilled out a gay strain, as if by way of relief to the gloom of a song which, however moving and beautiful, could not fail to make the heart grow sad. "I have a house and lands in Kent," protested Hitty’s light young caroling voice,— "And if you ’ll love me, love me now, Two pence ha’penny is my rent, And I cannot come every day to woo!" Whereupon Hannah Neal and Phebe, who sang a capital clear second, joined in with approval and alacrity to sing the chorus:— "Two pence ha’penny is his rent, And he cannot come every day to woo!"