He was in a fever of restlessness. He paced the deck all the day when he was not standing at the wheel; at night he could not sleep, but stood leaning over the bulwarks, watching the stars trembling in the quiet water. At one o'clock in the morning the _Perseverance_ passed a lightship. Already the boat was so near home! And in the hour which followed, his eight weeks of solitary communing, forced, as it were, by immediate necessity, bore their fruit. His inspiration--he counted the idea no less than an inspiration-came to him suddenly. He saw all at once his course marked out for him upon the chart of life. He would not suffer a doubt of it to enter his mind; he welcomed it with passion, and the great load was lifted from his mind. The idea had come. It was water in a dry land. A fisherman leaning over the bulwark by Stretton's side heard him suddenly begin to sing over to himself a verse or two of a song-- "Oh, come out, mah love! I'm a-waiting foh you heah! Doan' you keep yuh window closed to-night." It was a coon song which Stretton was humming over to himself. His voice dropped to a murmur, He stopped and laughed softly to himself, as though the song had very dear associations in his thoughts. Then his voice rose again, and there was now a kind of triumph in the lilt of the song, which had nothing to do with the words-- "De stars all a-gwine put dey little ones to bed Wid dey 'hush now, sing a lullaby,' De man in de moon nod his sleepy, sleepy head, And do sandman put a little in his eye." The words went lilting out over the quiet sea. It seemed to Stretton that they came from a lighted window just behind him, and were sung in a woman's voice. He was standing on a lawn surrounded by high dark trees in the warmth of a summer night. He was looking out past the islets over eight miles of quiet water to the clustered lights of the yachts in Oban Bay. The coon song was that which his wife had sung to him on one evening he was never to forget; and this night he had recovered its associations. It was no longer "a mere song sung by somebody." It seemed to him, so quickly did his anticipations for once outrun his judgment, that he had already recovered his wife. The _Perseverance_ was moored alongside of the quay at eight o'clock in the morning, and just at that time Millie was reading a letter of condolence from Lionel Callon. CHAPTER XIII TONY STRETTON RETURNS TO STEPNEY