the room had not been constructed with a view to any acoustic requirements; nevertheless, the fine and penetrating timbre of his trained voice told all the same; indeed, it is probable there was a lump in the throat of more than one of those young ladies when he sang the pathetic refrain, with its proud and sonorous finish—
"O lang may his lady-love
Look frae the Castle Doune,
Ere she see the Earl o' Moray
Come sounding through the toun."
Simple as the air was, it haunted the ear even of this professional vocalist all the evening; but perhaps that was because he was looking forward to a coming occasion on which he would have to sing the ballad; and well he knew that however numerous his audience might be—though he might be standing before all the Rosses and Frasers, the Gordons and Munroes, the Mackays and Mackenzies of the county—well he knew that he would be singing—that he intended to sing—to an audience of one only. And which would she like to have emphasized the more—the pathetic and hopeless outlook of the lady in the tower, or the proud state and ceremony of the earl himself as he used to "come sounding through the toun"? Well, he would practise a little, and ascertain what he could do with it—on some occasion when he found himself alone away up in the hills, with a silence around him unbroken save for the hushed whisper of the birch-leaves and the distant, low murmur of the Geinig falls.
CHAPTER XI.
THE PHANTOM STAG.
But if he were so anxious about how he should sing (for his audience of one only) that old Scotch ballad, he was not acting very wisely, or else he had a sublime confidence in the soundness of his chest; for on his host's offering him another day's stalking, he cheerfully accepted the same; and that notwithstanding they had now fallen upon a period of extremely rough, cold, and wet weather. Was this another piece of bravado, then—undertaken to produce a favorable impression in a certain