is body around carefully, and led the
way back to the summit.

"You'd best hurry," he advised Sam, who showed no eagerness for the
job. "In another twenty minutes the dusk will be closing down fast."

Sam slouched off at a fair pace across the field. Sir Caesar watched his
retreating figure until it reached the gate, and then, picking up his
gun, disposed himself to wait.

Seals? They ought to give good sport--better sport, he should imagine,
than deerstalking. A pity, too, to let it die out ... if seals still
frequented the Islands.... He must consult Sam about it, and pick up a
few wrinkles. He peered over the edge of the Carn, scanning the water,
a hundred feet below him, for the rock which Abe had described. He
could see no such rock. Maybe, though, it would be covered by the tide,
now close upon high-water.

Then he bethought him that the rock must lie a little to the west,
towards Piper's Hole--that is to say, in the next small indentation of
the shore. He strolled in that direction, following the cliff's edge,
still with eyes upon the sea.

Of a sudden he stopped and straightened himself up with a gasp.

What sound was that?... Surely a voice--a woman's voice--singing up to
him from the depth!

Was he awake or dreaming?... Beyond all doubt someone was singing, down
there: a mournful, wordless song. He was no judge of music, but it
seemed to him that, let alone the mystery of the singer, he had never
heard a voice so wonderful. It rose and fell with the surge of the
tide.

The Lord Proprietor laid down his gun. He had come to a shelving slope
that descended like a funnel or the half of a broken crater, narrowing
to a dark pit, in which the sea heaved gently, but with a sound as of a
monster sobbing; but still above this sound rose the voice of the
singer.

He flung himself on the verge beside his gun and craned forward....
Yes, there was the rock; yes, and there on the rock sat a figure--a
woman--and combed her long hair while she sang.

CHAPTER XXIV

LINNET SEES A MERMAID

Annet, Linnet, and Matthew Henry sat together in a niche of the cliff
to the west of Piper's Hole, and panted after their climb.

They had raced up the hill in the gathering twilight for this (their
Aunt Vazzy had assured them) was the time, if ever, to hear the
mermaids singing in Piper's Hole, and perhaps to catch a glimpse of
them; this, and the hour of moonrise--which for them would be out of
the question.

For s