The Dutchman caught the word "daughter." Had Daland a daughter? Would he give her to him for a wife? And Daland, who had been thinking what a fine husband such a man, with a ship full of treasures, would be for his daughter, lost no time, and said yes. Then hope came again to the heart of the Dutchman. He was impatient to see this maiden who, he silently prayed, might be the one to deliver him from his fate. And while he prayed, the wind changed, the clouds broke, a ray of sunshine peeped through, the sea became smooth as glass. "You'll see her this day," said Daland. And so, bidding the sailors raise anchor, Daland went aboard his boat, the Dutchman aboard his, and with a heigho, heigho, they sailed out of the bay. III Daland's home stood, as a sailor's home should, near the sea. Through its white-curtained windows one could see far out over the blue water, to the broad horizon, where ships hovered like white birds against the sky. Inside the house all was as sweet and clean as the willing hands of old Marie, the house-keeper, could make it. The walls, rough and unpainted, were almost covered with flat blue maps and sailor's charts, save where, over the wide doorway, a single picture hung. It was the picture of a man; a man with a pale face, a long, black beard, and strange, foreign-looking clothes. But I do not need to tell you who he was. You know the story behind those melancholy eyes that looked out so sadly from the picture. You have heard it this very day. Had you entered that sunny room on a certain afternoon long, long ago, you would have seen a group of happy girls, under the direction of Marie, all diligently spinning. And, had you stopped to listen, you would have heard merry chatter and light-hearted snatches of song mingled with the whir-r, whir-r, whir-r-r of those quick-turning wheels. How they joked, and laughed, and sang, those girls of long ago! Did I say all? No, not all. For there was one who sat quite apart, her idle hands in her lap, her young face uplifted, and her dreaming eyes fixed on the portrait over the door. She was Senta, the daughter of Daland. Once, when Senta was very young, old Marie had told her the history of that pale man in the picture, and the sadness of his fate, and that of his unhappy crew, had touched her tender heart. And, because she was an imaginative girl, who fancied strange things, the picture of the Flying Dutchman, wandering over unknown seas, came back to her mind again and again. She thought of him by day; she dreamed of him by night. She even began to imagine that God had destined her to be that maiden fair whose love would deliver him from his mournful roaming. But certainly she never breathed such a strange thought to a single soul.