seaman's cap,
with tousled hair and a simple vacant face, and lagging lower lip,
but eyes of a strange brightness.

And "Aw, yes," Chalse was saying, "he's a big lump of a boy grown,
and no pride at all, at all, and a fine English tongue at him, and
clever extraordinary. Him and me's same as brothers, and he was
mortal fond to ride my ould donkey when he was a slip of a lad. Aw,
yes, him and me's middlin' well acquent."

Then some linnets that were hiding in the trammon began to twitter,
and what was said next Michael Sunlocks did not catch, but only heard
the voice that answered old Chalse, and that seemed to make the music
of the birds sound harsh.

"'What like is he?' Is it like it is?" old Chalse said again. "Aw,
straight as the backbone of a herrin' and tall and strong; and as for
a face, maybe there's not a man in the island to hold a candle to
him. Och, no, nor a woman neither--saving yourself, maybe. And aw,
now, the sweet and tidy ye're looking this morning, anyway: as fresh
as the dewdrop, my chree."

Goldie grew restless, began to paw the path, and twist his round
flanks into the leaves of the trammon, and at the next instant
Michael Sunlocks was aware that there was a flutter in front of him,
and a soft tread on the silent moss, and before he could catch back
the lost consciousness of that moment, a light and slender figure
shot out with a rhythm of gentle movement, and stood in all its grace
and lovely sweetness two paces beyond the head of his horse.

"Greeba!" thought Michael Sunlocks; and sure enough it was she, in
the first bloom of her womanhood, with gleams of her child face
haunting her still and making her woman's face luminous, with the
dark eyes softened and the dimpled cheeks smoothed out. She was
bareheaded, and the dark fall of her hair was broken over her ears by
eddies of wavy curls. Her dress was very light and loose, and it left
the proud lift of her throat bare, as well as the tower of her round
neck, and a hint of the full swell of her bosom.

In a moment Michael Sunlocks dropped from the saddle, and held out
his hand to Greeba, afraid to look into her face as yet, and she put
out her hand to him and blushed: both frightened more than glad. He
tried to speak, but never a word would come, and he felt his cheeks
burn red. But her eyes were shy of his, and nothing she saw but the
shadow of Michael's tall form above her and a glint of the uncovered
shower of fair hair that had made h