luctantly back to the dim lane where he stood beside a high-walled garden.
Slowly that voice won its way into his consciousness. He had listened to the Muskogee girls, daughters of the Wind and of the White Deer, singing in the moonlight beside the clear rippling waters of Tallasee, but they had not sung as this woman was singing. He was aware suddenly that there was a kinship between the woman's song and that of the sanguilla, that somehow this singing woman had caught the very spirit of the singing bird; yet he was aware, too, that while the bird's song was wholly joyous, in the woman's there was a note of yearning and of sadness.
The rich tones stirred him strangely. He stood entranced, enthralled, scarcely breathing, his lips parted, his black eyes aglow. It was dim dusk now, and the air was heavy with the breath of wild blossoms. There must have been some strange prophetic magic in that moment. Somehow Lachlan McDonald knew that he stood at the threshold of a rare adventure.
This knowledge came to him suddenly, mysteriously as he listened bemused and fascinated; and it cleared his brain instantly, so that at once he grew alert and eager and fiercely joyful, all his senses keyed to the utmost. His eyes shone with an intenser light; his lean, dark face relaxed in a smile.
"Lady of the divine voice," he murmured, "the Lady Sanguilla, till I know your name: I think"
A new sound startled him into silence. The song
