got to go now and help Ann. What time are yer
coming for the serenade?"

"I'll be here about eight; the moon will be out by then and we must have
a moon."

She started away on the run, beckoning to him with her unwashed hands:
"Come on, then, till I show yer my windy. It's the little one over the
dining-room. There ain't a balcony, but--see there! there's the top of
the bay windy and I can lean out--why didn't yer tell me yer could play
the guitar?"

"Because I can't."

"A harp, belike?"

"No; guess again."

"Yer no good;--but yer'll come?"

"Shurre; an' more be token it's at eight 'o the clock Oi'll be under yer
windy." He gave the accent with such Celtic gusto that the little girl
was captivated.

"Ain't you a corker!" she said admiringly and, waving her hand again to
him, ran to the house. Champney followed more slowly to lay the case
before Ann and Hannah.

On his way homeward he found himself wondering if he had ever seen the
child before. As she leaned on the rail and looked out over the lake, a
certain grace of attitude, which the coarse clothing failed to conceal,
the rapt expression in the eyes, the _timbre_ of her voice, all awakened
a dim certainty that he had seen her before at some time and place
distinctly unusual; but where? He turned the search-light of
concentrated thought upon his comings and goings and doings during the
last year and more. Where had he seen just such a child?

He looked up from the roadway, on which his eyes had been fixed while
his absent thought was making back tracks over the last twelve months,
and saw before him the high pastures of The Gore. In the long afterglow
of the July sunset they enamelled the barren heights with a rich,
yellowish green. In a flash it came to him: "The green hill far away
without a city wall"; the child singing on the vaudeville stage; the
hush in the audience. He smiled to himself. He was experiencing that
satisfaction which is common to all who have run down the quarry of a
long-hunted recollection.

"She's the very one," he said to himself; "I wonder if Aunt Meda
knows."

VI

That which proves momentous in our lives is rarely anticipated, seldom
calculated. Its factors are for the most part unknown quantities; if not
prime in themselves they are, at least, prime to each other. It cannot
be measured in terms of time, for often it lies between two infinities.
But the momentous decision, event, action, which reacts upon the life of
a