le boat,
All on the ocean I will float,
Hailing all ships as they pass by,
Inquiring for my sweet sailor-boy.'"

I liked the music, it was so plaintive, so different from the common
well-bred songs.

Not a breath of air was stirring. Her voice rang out upon the stillness,
clear and shrill as a wild bird's. It was such a voice as you frequently
meet with among country-girls, entirely uncultivated, but of great
power, and, on some notes, of wonderful sweetness. Her admiring
listener rested upon his oars, letting his skiff drift along upon the
tide. It floated underneath the tree, and up into "the Crick." As it
passed, I saw, in the bottom of the boat, a little basket of wild
cherries.

While watching their progress, I heard a rustling among some
alder-bushes that grew about a fence, and, upon looking that way, saw
David. He, too, was watching the play, though he had not, like me, the
benefit of a seat in the gallery.

The expression on his countenance was something like what I had seen on
the faces of people at the theatre: a sort of fixed, immovable look, as
if its wearer were determined on being sensation-proof.

I glanced at the skiff. The Doctor's boy was throwing cherries at Mary
Ellen, and she was catching them in her mouth. She was in a great
frolic, laughing, showing her pretty teeth, and so earnest that one
might suppose life had no other object than catching wild cherries.

Just then I perceived, a little to the right of me, the head and
shoulders of a woman rising slowly above the bank, and recognized at
once the small features and peculiarly small gray eyes of Miss Joey. She
had been gathering marsh-rosemary along-shore.

She, too, was a spectator of the play,--was, in part, an actor in it;
for, while David's eyes were fixed upon the boat, hers were fixed upon
him, and with the same despairing expression.

"Poor Miss Joey!" I said mentally, "doomed to see your beautiful plan
fail and come to nought! You and he suffer the same suffering, but it
can be no bond between you."

She turned, and slowly descended the bank, and I watched her small
figure as it picked its way among the rocks, and finally disappeared
around a point.

Meanwhile the voyagers had landed, and were making their way to the
house. I could see them until they reached the garden-gate, could see
Mary Ellen swinging her sun-bonnet by its string, and hear her laughing,
as she tried to mock the katydids.

Then I looked for David