Page:War Drums (1928).pdf/29

 inn, turning over in his mind the matters to be dealt with during his last two days in Charles Town, for he had fixed his departure now for the third day.

These matters were chiefly personal. He must say good-bye to James Almayne, the hunter, his father's old friend; to Mr. Francis O'Sullivan, his former teacher; to several influential gentlemen of the Colony to whom he was indebted for courtesies and favours; to three or four young ladies and to certain young men. These farewells spoken, there would be little else to engage him.

He rose presently and, with a nod to Jem Marshall, went out into the street. From the wide thoroughfare along the waterfront, thronged with seamen from the ships in harbour, he turned into a dark cross-street and thence into a narrow lane under a garden wall; and suddenly, as he walked briskly along this deserted lane, he was aware of two songs floating over the wall on the soft, sweet-scented April air—the song of a bird and the song of a woman.

Something in the sound stopped him. Head back, lips parted, he stood listening; and for as much as a minute the song of the woman went unheeded, and he heard only the song of the bird.

It was the first sanguilla of the spring, and in an instant its music caught him up and whirled him far. For a little while his thoughts lingered in a green country where he had first heard the sanguillas sing. Then the woman's voice, richer and sweeter even than that of the black and russet bird, brought him re-