om self-consciousness as a child, Lyle began
her song, her eyes fixed on the distant shining peaks, and her only
accompaniment the music of the cascades.

"Love is come with a song and a smile,
Welcome love with a smile and a song;
Love can stay but a little while:
Why can not he stay?
They call him away;
Ye do him wrong, ye do him wrong,
Love will stay for a whole life long."

Whether Lyle sang correctly that night was never known; even the
beautiful words of the old song that seemed so appropriate to the
occasion, were forgotten before she had sung more than two or three
lines, and her listeners sat entranced, spell-bound, by the voice of
the singer; a voice of such exquisite sweetness and clearness, and yet
possessing such power and depth of expression, that it thrilled the
hearts of her listeners, seeming to lift them out of all consciousness
of their surroundings, and to transport them to another world; a
world

"Where the singers, whose names are deathless,
One with another make music, unheard of men."

As the last note died away, a long, deep sigh from Houston seemed to
break the spell, and Miss Gladden looking up, her eyes shining with
unshed tears, said, as she pressed Lyle's hand:

"My dear, we have found our song-queen, our nightingale. We can all
learn of you, and never equal you."

Houston had been strangely moved, and as he spoke, there was a slight
tremor in his voice.

"I have heard, in all my life, but one voice like that, and that was
one who died when I was a child."

Lyle looked surprised.

"Has no one ever told you you could sing?" asked Miss Gladden.

"I never sang for any one, excepting once, for Jack," answered Lyle.

"What did he say of your voice?" inquired Miss Gladden.

"He said, like Mr. Houston, that he had heard but one voice like mine,
but that he did not like to hear me, so I have never sung since,
excepting by myself."

"Lyle," said Miss Gladden suddenly, "how old is this man whom you call
Jack?"

"Possibly forty, perhaps a little less," she answered indifferently.

A new thought had flashed into Miss Gladden's mind. For some time she
had doubted whether Lyle were really a child of Maverick and his wife,
she was so utterly unlike them; could it be possible that Jack, whose
life seemed so much a mystery, was the father of Lyle?