easy for him to sit down on a rock and fall into a dreaming state. The
good spirits were abroad, and it was their voices that he heard among
the leaves. Their chant too was full of courage, hope and promise, and
his spirits lifted as he listened. They were watching over him, guarding
him from evil, and he felt, at last, that they were telling him
something.

It is not always easy to know the exact burden of a song, even if it is
uplifting, and Robert listened a long time, trying to decipher exactly
what the good spirits were saying to him. It was just such a song as
they sang to him before the pirate ship came, saving one strain and that
was most important. There was no underlying note of warning. Hunt for it
as he would, with his fullest power of hearing, he could detect no trace
of it. Then he became convinced. Another ship was coming, and this time
it was no pirate craft.

He roused himself from his dreaming state and shook his head, but the
vision did not depart. The ship was coming and it was for him to receive
it. The news of it had been written too deeply upon the sensitive plate
of his brain to be effaced, and, as he walked back toward the house, it
seemed to grow more vivid. He was too much excited to study that day,
and he spent the time building a great heap of wood upon the beach. Even
if one were helped by good spirits he must do his own part. They might
bring the ship to the horizon's rim, but it was for him to summon it
from there, and he would have a great bonfire ready.

The brilliance of the day departed in the afternoon, and it became
apparent that the season of rain and storm was not yet over. Clouds
marched up in grim battalions from the south and west, rain came in
swift puffs and then in long, heavy showers, the sea heaved, breaking