well-recognized strains of "Annie Laurie" played by invisible hands.

The sun was low in the west, the sea an unruffled mirror, the coast line
a fretwork of foam fringe where the ground swells met it, and above its
murmur, trilling and quivering in the still air, came that old, old
strain:--

"And for bonnie Annie Laurie
I'd lay me doon and dee,"

repeated again and again, until Winn, enraptured, spellbound, moving not
a finger but listening ever, heard it no more. Then presently, as
watching and wondering still whence and from whose hand had come this
almost uncanny music, he saw, deep down amid the tangle of rocks below
him, a slight, girlish figure emerge, with a dark green bag clasped
tenderly under one arm, and slowly pick her way up the sides of the
defile and disappear toward the village.

CHAPTER VII

SUNDAY ON ROCKHAVEN

For a few days Winn Hardy was so occupied with the cares of his new
position that he thought of little else. It was a pleasing freedom, for
never before had he known what it was to be his own master; but now the
hiring of men and directing operations gave him a sense of power and
responsibility that was exhilarating.

Jess Hutton aided him in many ways and, in fact, seemed anxious to
assist in this new enterprise that was likely to be of material benefit
to Rockhaven. Winn wisely let the stock matter rest, feeling that a
practical demonstration of the Rockhaven Granite Company's enterprise
and intentions would in due time establish confidence.

He wondered many times who the girl was that had hid herself in that
weird cluster of rocks to play the violin, and marvelled that any maid,
born and reared amid the half-starved residents of Rockhaven, should
even have that laudable ambition; but he asked no questions. In a way,
the romance of it also kept him from inquiries. "I will bide my time,"
he thought, "and some day I will go over and surprise this maid of the
gorge."

He had noticed a rather immaturely formed girl with dark, lustrous eyes
once or twice in the dooryard of a little white house in the same lane
where he had found lodgment, and had met her once on the village street
and half surmised she might be this mysterious violinist. He gave little
thought to it, however, for his new position and the open path to
success and possible riches that seemed before him was enough to put
cave-seeking maids, however charming, out of his mind. Then, too, he had
not quite re