ads and their almost forgotten airs. Jim was
very still when she began to sing, for her voice and the music moved
him strongly. The air was wild, the rude words rang with something one
felt when one battled with floods and snowslides. They told how the
moss-troopers rode down Ettrick water long ago; but human nature did
not change and hard-bitten men now went out on the snowy trail,
carrying shovels and axes instead of spears. But how did Evelyn,
surrounded by luxurious refinements, understand?

"It's fine!" he exclaimed when she stopped. "You have got it just
right; horses' feet, and harness jingling. But you go back of that to
the feeling one has when one braces up and sets one's mouth tight."

Evelyn laughed and looked at Mordaunt, who frowned. "Perhaps you are
easily satisfied, Jim, but music, critical folks contemptuously call
descriptive, needs some talent." She paused and beat out a few bars
imitating a horse's gallop. "It really does go back of this."

"Never mind critical folks," said Jim. "Sing another--the song of
Flodden."

"I'm not sure the song you mean has really much to do with Flodden, but
I know one that has. It's old and rude, like the Borderers. You know
a band would not fight, but were too proud to run away. They stood
fast, by themselves, and were shot down by the archers while the loyal
Scots fell round their wounded king. This, however, is shocking art;
it's like writing what you are meant to see at the top of a picture. I
know it annoys Lance."

"I can endure much from you," Mordaunt rejoined.

Evelyn struck the keys and began to sing. Words and air had a strange
barbaric force, and Jim pictured the stern Scots spearmen closing round
their fallen monarch and their hate for the stubborn mutineers. The
blood came to his skin when the music stopped and the girl's voice
flung out a dying soldier's curse. The curse was strangely modern; one
heard it often in the West.

"Thank you! You have not sung like this before," he said, and turned
to Jake. "How does it strike you, partner?"

"It hits me where I feel it, and hits me hard. I reckon the men who
fought that old battle meant to make good. I don't know how Miss
Halliday knows what a man with red blood feels when he's got to put
over a big hard job, but she does know."

"I'm afraid you would make me vain," said Evelyn.

She turned as she left the piano and gave Carrie a quick glance. A
sharp jealousy seized her, for