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.”