in a right of way. What next? Disn't he put his furs
in a canoe to sink in the lee of the island, and there he went on
reading in the night with his chin out of water, and the light from his
house blazing and lighting up the book in his fist. Oh my, he was great
for reading, Willis.

Well, here, one night he came telling me about some queer women on a
beach, singing. "Ay! It was impossible to keep away from them while they
were at it. What is their name again?"

He made a prolonged effort to remember, sighed painfully, fixed his
gaze. I brought him back as if from a fit of epilepsy by the
interjection of the word, "Siren."

"Ay," he said, slowly and sadly. "The men put wax in their ears--" Now
mark this. The day after I was hearing this of Willis, the woman put her
hand on my arm as I was passing the ledge.

"You are a friend of my husband's," she whispered to me.

"What now?" I said.

"Will he come back to me, I wonder?" she said, looking in the valley.

"This is a long business, searching for gold," I went muttering.

"No man can say I have been unfaithful to him," she said to me, the
fierce woman, breathing through her teeth. "I have been speaking to no
man."

"This is certain," I said to her.

"If he dis not come according to my dream I am a lost woman, by this way
of going on," she said to me.

How is this? There were tears flowing on the face, while she was telling
me she was bewitched by the singing of Pal Yachy.

Oh, at first she would just lie listening there, but now the man with
his sweet voice was drawing her from her bed, to come putting aside the
scented bottles and leaning in the window.

Now I said, "My good woman, I am an old man with knowledge of the world.
This man is a--what's this again--siren. He has a fatal voice. You must
simply put wax in your ears not to hear it when he comes."

What next? Disn't she confess to me that she has listened to him too
many times to be deaf to him. No, she must watch the valley when he
comes singing his rich song; her cheeks were wet then, and the wind went
shaking her. No, this was not a moment for wax. I was an old man. She
prevailed upon me to sit outside her window in a chair, watching for
him.

"Oh, I am afraid," she whispered to me, "being alone so high out of the
valley."

There I sat by night, hearing sounds of thunder below this crag. Pebbles
came rattling on the window, the rapid was choked with flying rock. They
were growing rich, the