nd snapped him up. And since then I have
lived all alone--

_'With a fal-lal-la-lady.'_

And soon I shall be gone, my little dear, and nobody will miss me; and
then the poor stone will be left all alone."

"But, please, which is the way to Shiny Wall?" said Tom.

"Oh, you must go, my little dear--you must go. Let me see--I am
sure--that is--really, my poor old brains are getting quite puzzled. Do
you know, my little dear, I am afraid, if you want to know, you must
ask some of these vulgar birds about, for I have quite forgotten."

And the poor old Gairfowl began to cry tears of pure oil; and Tom was
quite sorry for her; and for himself too, for he was at his wit's end
whom to ask.

But by there came a flock of petrels, who are Mother Carey's own
chickens; and Tom thought them much prettier than Lady Gairfowl, and so
perhaps they were; for Mother Carey had had a great deal of fresh
experience between the time that she invented the Gairfowl and the time
that she invented them. They flitted along like a flock of black
swallows, and hopped and skipped from wave to wave, lifting up their
little feet behind them so daintily, and whistling to each other so
tenderly, that Tom fell in love with them at once, and called them to
know the way to Shiny Wall.

"Shiny Wall? Do you want Shiny Wall? Then come with us, and we will show
you. We are Mother Carey's own chickens, and she sends us out over all
the seas, to show the good birds the way home."

Tom was delighted, and swam off to them, after he had made his bow to
the Gairfowl. But she would not return his bow: but held herself bolt
upright, and wept tears of oil as she sang:

"_And so the poor stone was left all alone;
With a fal-lal-la-lady._"

But she was wrong there; for the stone was not left all alone: and the
next time that Tom goes by it, he will see a sight worth seeing.

The old Gairfowl is gone already: but there are better things come in
her place; and when Tom comes he will see the fishing-smacks anchored
there in hundreds, from Scotland, and from Ireland, and from the
Orkneys, and the Shetlands, and from all the Northern ports, full of the
children of the old Norse Vikings, the masters of the sea. And the men
will be hauling in the great cod by thousands, till their hands are sore
from the lines; and they will be making cod-liver oil and guano, and
salting down the fish; and there will be a man-of-war steamer there to