"A harp, belike?"
"No; guess again."
"Yer no good;—but yer'll come?"
"Shurre; an' more be token it's at eight 'o the clock Oi'll be under yer windy." He gave the accent with such Celtic gusto that the little girl was captivated.
"Ain't you a corker!" she said admiringly and, waving her hand again to him, ran to the house. Champney followed more slowly to lay the case before Ann and Hannah.
On his way homeward he found himself wondering if he had ever seen the child before. As she leaned on the rail and looked out over the lake, a certain grace of attitude, which the coarse clothing failed to conceal, the rapt expression in the eyes, the timbre of her voice, all awakened a dim certainty that he had seen her before at some time and place distinctly unusual; but where? He turned the search-light of concentrated thought upon his comings and goings and doings during the last year and more. Where had he seen just such a child?
He looked up from the roadway, on which his eyes had been fixed while his absent thought was making back tracks over the last twelve months, and saw before him the high pastures of The Gore. In the long afterglow of the July sunset they enamelled the barren heights with a rich, yellowish green. In a flash it came to him: "The green hill far away without a city wall"; the child singing on the vaudeville stage; the hush in the audience. He smiled to himself. He was experiencing that satisfaction which is common to all who have run down the quarry of a long-hunted recollection.
"She's the very one," he said to himself; "I wonder if Aunt Meda knows."