“Do, Mrs. Boyle,” entreated Iola. “I have never heard you sing. Indeed, I did not know you could sing.”
Something in her voice grated upon Barney's ear, but he spoke no word.
“Sing!” cried Dick. “You ought to hear her. Now, mother, for the honor of the heather! Give us 'Can Ye Sew Cushions?' That's a 'baby song,' too.”
“No,” said Barney quietly, “Sing 'The Mac'Intosh,' mother.” And he began to play that exquisite Highland lament.
It was not her son's entreaty so much as something in the soft drawl of the Southern girl that made Mrs. Boyle yield. Something in that tone touched the pride in the old lady's Highland blood. When Barney reached the end of the refrain his mother took up the verse with the violin accompanying.
Her voice lacked fulness and power. It was worn and thin, but she had the exquisite lilting note of the Highland maids at their milking or of the fisher folk at the mending of their nets. Clear and sweet and with a penetrating pathos indescribable, the voice rose and fell in all the quaint turns and quavers and cadences that a tune takes on with age. As she sang her song in the soft Gaelic tongue, with hands lying idly in her lap, with eyes glowing in their gloomy depths, the spell of mountain and glen and loch fell upon her sons and upon the girl seated at her feet, while Iola's great lustrous eyes, fastened upon the stranger's face, softened to tears.
“Oh, that is too lovely!” cried Iola, when the song was done, clapping her hands. “No, not lovely. That is not the word. Sad, sad.” She hid her face in her hands one impulsive moment, then said softly, “I could never do that. Never! Never! What is it you put into the song? What is it?” she cried, turning to Barney.
“It's the moan of the sea,” said Barney gravely.
“It gives a feller a kind of holler pain inside,” said Ben Fallows. “There hain't no words fer it.”
“Sing again,” entreated Iola, all the lazy indifference gone from her voice. “Sing just one more.”