charm lingers in melodies hummed or piped
by old folks of winter nights, its magic has been made the stuff of
myth, so that as children we have heard the sound of Simon's instrument
in the spring woods when we went there white-hay-gathering, or for
fagots for the schoolhouse fire.

A few nights after that thundering canter from the spider's den where
Kate Petullo sat amid her coils, the Chamberlain went to wander care
among easy hearts. It was a season of mild weather though on the eve
of winter; even yet the perfume of the stubble-field and of fruitage in
forest and plantation breathed all about the country of Mac-Cailen
Mor. Before the windows of the inn the bay lay warm and placid, and
Dunchuach, wood-mantled, and the hills beyond it vague, remote, and
haunted all by story, seemed to swim in a benign air, and the
outer world drew the souls of these men in a tavern into a brief
acquaintanceship. The window of the large room they sat in looked
out upon this world new lit by the tender moon that hung on Strome.
A magistrate made to shutter it and bring the hour of Bacchus all the
faster.

"Hold there, Bailie!" cried the Chamberlain. "Good God! let us have so
long as we can of a night so clean and wholesome."

It needed but a hint of that nature from this creature of romance and
curious destiny to silence their unprofitable discourse over herds
and session discipline, and for a space they sat about the window,
surrendered to the beauty of the night. So still that outer world, so
vacant of living creature, that it might have been a picture! In the
midst of their half circle the Chamberlain lay back in his chair and
drank the vision in by gloating eyes.

"Upon my word," said he at last in a voice that had the rich profound of
passion--"upon my word, we are the undeserving dogs!" and at an impulse
he took his flageolet and played a Highland air. It had the proper
spirit of the hour--the rapturous evening pipe of birds in dewy
thickets, serene yet someway touched by melancholy; there was no man
there among them who did not in his breast repeat its words that have
been heard for generations in hillside milking-folds where women put
their ruddy cheeks against the kine and look along the valleys, singing
softly to the accompaniment of the gushing pail.

He held his audience by a chain of gold: perhaps he knew it, perhaps he
joyed in it, but his half-shut eyes revealed no more than that he still
saw the beauty and peace of