Notwithstanding this caution to Dr. McGinty’s flock, they were still wont to linger near the “Rock House” and listen, until one night there was no light to be seen, nor sound issued from the darkened windows. Lord Peyton’s horse had returned riderless, and his lifeless body was found near a trysting place where he and Lady Cornelia were wont to meet.
The “Rock House” was closed now, and Lady Cornelia traveled in foreign lands. Years passed, and once more sounds of music, plaintive now, were heard—but these also ceased in time, and the house passed into other hands.
And now, nearly a hundred years after, with the generations that it has sheltered sleeping a dreamless sleep near by, this old house alone seems to preserve its pristine youth.
Once again it is occupied by a young couple, and the music that now floats from the open windows is that of childish laughter. But on one occasion the children grow serious, when they are trying to spell the name cut in the rock on which the house is built, and as with chubby fingers they point out and spell L-a-d-y C-o-r-n-e-l-i-a S-k-i-p-w-i-t-h, one older than the rest, holding up a warning finger, tells them to “Listen!” Do you not hear Lady Cornelia’s spinet? She is singing:
“My ain laddie was a sodger boy;
And I will sell the kaims from my hair.
And follow my true love for e’er mair.”
And then they all listened, and—who can tell? We all know that the refrain in Lady Cornelia’s song will never pass away—that love is the secret spring of perennial youth, and will be with us until time is no more.
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John Trotwood Moore, Esq.