Hark! What did he hear? Was it a cry! was it a child’s cry? And what was that? It sounded like a fiddle. He stopped to look around.
“I declare, we’ve had a high tide in the night!” said he, and trudged on.
But what was that? That was certainly a child’s cry.
The man looked sharply about.
“It can’t be she,” he said. “Folks from heaven wouldn’t cry, even if they were let to come—at least, if they were little children.”
And so he still looked sharply about. And looking, what did he see?
He saw great haystacks of meadow hay out in the meadow, with the tide-water all about them. Then his eyes were fixed on one particular haystack. On its top, with her yellow hair and smiling face in sight, was—it could not be, though—but it was—a little girl, and dangling by the side of the stack was a guitar with a yellow face. The man waded through the water that lay between the dry land and the stack.
“Crawl down to my shoulders;” and he stood by the side of the stack till she was on his shoulders, with her arms about his neck.
“How came you there?”