ng up their suckers and pull you down off
the rocks and eat you."

Matthew Henry drew back from the brink, visibly daunted.

"Look here," he began, "I don't mind mermaids. Mermaids, so far as they
go----"

But here he came to a halt as a tinkling sound--the sound of a stringed
instrument, gently thrummed, rose from out of the abyss.

It fell on their ears in a pause of the surging water. It came from the
Mermaid's Rock, and thither all three children turned their eyes, to
see, over the crest of it, from its hidden seaward side, a woman's head
and shoulders emerge into view!

In the gathering dusk, even had she lifted her face to them, they could
not have discerned her features. But as she climbed into view her
loosened hair fell all about her; on the summit of the rock she turned
and seated herself fronting the sea; and while the three children drew
together, cowering, at her gaze, she began to sing.

And she sang marvellously. If her song had words, they were foreign
words; but whether articulate or not it was beautiful beyond all human
compass--or so at least it seemed to the children, whose experience
rested, to be sure, on the congregational efforts of Brefar Church.

It rose and sank upon the swell of the tide. It held such sweetness in
its mystery that, frightened though they were, the wonder of it drew
tears to their eyes. It seemed to open pathways into that world of
their desire, on the boundaries of which they were forever treading;
yet forever vainly, because they had not the passwords, and in their
ignorance could only guess that miracles lay beyond, sealed,
unimaginable.

The children huddled together, lost their fear in wonder, as the voice
of the mermaid, growing more and more confident, pierced new roads for
them--roads upon which the twilight closed at once; rays into a glory
they felt, and trembled to feel, but could not apprehend, because the
vision was of mere beauty, and music divorced from words is the last of
arts to convey form and meaning.

Yet though wholly indefinite, almost wholly meaningless, it spoke to
something to which the children felt all their blood thrilling,
responding. Listening, they forgot their fear altogether....

The singer laid down her instrument. The grey of the twilight ran over
her bare shoulders as, with a turn of the arm, she swept her tresses
back, and--still singing--drew out mirror and comb....

They craned to watch.

Suddenly from the height of the cl