nt, on and on, faster and faster, until at last he came to the
door of the tomb.

He descended into it. He took the child from the arms of Cyclona, who
sat by the fire cuddling it, and held it close to his heart.

"He has been crying," she told him, "every single minute since you
have been gone. Crying! Crying! No matter what I did, no matter how
hard I tried, I couldn't quiet him."

CHAPTER X.

[Illustration]

On the following day Cyclona sat in the low rocking chair, rocking the
baby, singing to it, crooning a lullaby, a memory of her own baby days
when some self-imposed mother, taking the place of her own, had
crooned to her.

"Sleep, baby, sleep,
The big stars are the sheep.
The little stars are the lambs, I guess,
The moon is the shepherdess,
Sleep,
Baby,
Sleep."

But the baby sobbed, looking in bewilderment up at the dark gypsy face
above it in search of the pale and beautiful face of his mother.

Finding it not, he hid his eyes upon her shoulder, and sobbed.

The wind sobbed with him. Outside the window it wailed in eerie
lamentation. It dashed a near-by shrub, a ragged rosetree that Seth
had planted, against the window. The twigs tapped at the pane like
human fingers.

"There, there!" soothed Cyclona, and she changed the baby's position,
so that his little body curled warmly about her and his face was
upturned to hers to coax him into the belief that she was Celia.

Once more she drifted into the lullaby, crooning it very softly in her
lilting young voice:

"Sleep, baby, sleep.
The big stars are the sheep,
The little stars are the lambs, I guess,
The moon is the shepherdess,
Sleep,
Baby,
Sleep."

But the wind seemed to oppose her efforts at soothing the child whose
startled eyes stared at the window against which tapped the attenuated
fingers of the twigs. The wind shrieked at him. His sobs turned into
cries.

Cyclona got up and going to the bed laid him on it, talking cooing
baby talk to him. She prepared his food. She warmed the milk and
crumbled bread into it.

Taking him up again, she fed it to him spoonful by spoonful,
awkwardly, yet in a motherly way.

Then she patted him on her shoulder, and tried to rock him to sleep,
singing, patting him on the back cooingly when the howl of the wind
startled h