| "'How sweet the breath beneath the hill |
| Of Sharon's lovely rose.'" |
She swung her foot in time to the rhythm. She was not sure whether a rill was a fountain or a stream, so she decided, as there was no dictionary convenient, to think of it as like the creek where it crossed the road at the foot of Red Hill.
Again she looked at the book; skipping a stanza, she read:—
| "'By cool Siloam's shady rill |
| The lily must decay; |
| The rose that blooms beneath the hill |
| Must shortly pass away.'" |
The melancholy of this was interesting; at the same time it reminded her that she was lonely. After repeating, "Must shortly pass away," her eyes unexpectedly filled with tears.
"Now I am not going to cry," she said sternly, and by way of carrying out this resolve she again closed her eyes tight. It was desperately hard work, and she could not have told whether two minutes or ten had passed when she was startled by an odd, guttural voice close to her asking, "What is the matter, little girl?"
If the voice was strange, the figure she saw when she looked up was stranger still. A gaunt old man in a suit of rusty black, with straggling gray hair and beard, stood holding his hat in his hand, gazing at her with eyes so bright they made her uneasy.
"Nothing," she answered, rising hastily.
But the visitor continued to stand there and smile at her, shaking his head and repeating, "Mustn't cry."
"I am not crying," Rosalind insisted, glancing over her shoulder to make sure of a way of escape.