her form and showed dark against the feeble light
of the moon at her back. As he looked she uttered a droll sound--fair
counterfeit of the harsh note a mocking-bird speaks to himself before
his nightly outburst--and then broke forth in a voice as untrained, but
as fresh and joyous and as reckless of reproof or praise, as the bird's:

"'O, the lone, starry hours give me, love,
When still is the beautiful night----'"

At sight of a second and third figure he moved that way, while below the
singer's feet sounded a mother's moan: "Ramsey! mon Dieu! my chile! come
down from yondeh!"

The girl's eyes stayed in the sky, but one mutinous foot so keenly smote
the roof that her nurse, approaching behind, stopped short, and from
Hugh came a laugh, a thin, involuntary treble, which caused Ramsey
visibly to flinch.

"Ramsey!" entreated her mother again, but----

"Just this one moment, beloved mom-a! Listen, oh, listen, everybody! to
my midnight thought!" The rhapsodist struck a stiffer pose and began
with all her voice, "Since infinite space is lighted only by the stars!
their rush and roll--te rum te riddle, te rum te ree----"

"Ramsey!"

"--Is an eternal starlight!" The girl hugged and kissed her black nurse:
"Oh, mammy Joy! is that absurd to you?"

"Ram-zee!" cried the mother. But a toll of the great bell silenced her.
Another solemnly followed, and when a third completed the signal to
land, the staggering footsteps of the vanished girl dragging old Joy
with her in full retreat were a relief to every ear. As madame turned to
say good night a last bleat came out of the darkness:

"Please don't, anybody, tell about the _Quakeress_ to-night!"

XIV

THE COMMITTEE OF SEVEN

"Hitherto," said the senator, in his stateroom, to the bishop and the
judge, "there really has been no need to take any assertive step."

He was explaining his slowness as head of the deputation and was glad,
he said, to have a word apart with these two. The room could not seat
seven and for the moment the other four were at the bar, where standing
was so much easier than elsewhere.

Their business, the seven's, he added, was with the captain, and
officially the captain had gone off duty at eight o'clock and was on
again only now, at midnight, in the "middle watch." Even yet there need
be no hurry; what they wanted done could not be done before early
morning, at Prophet's Island.

The bishop approved. "Don't cross the bridg