Ruth took her hand out of the water and looked at him with puzzled eyes.  “Where have I heard it?  On a boat somewhere, and the moon was shining.  I remember the refrain perfectly.”

Sandy remembered, too.  In a moment he felt himself an impostor and a cheat.  He had stumbled into the Enchanted Land, but he had no right to be there.  He buried his head in his hands and felt the dream-world tottering about him.

“Are you trying to remember the second verse?” asked Ruth.

“No,” said he, his head still bowed; “I’m trying to help you remember the first one.  Was it the boat ye came over from Europe in?”

“That was it!” she cried.  “It was on shipboard.  I was standing by the railing one night and heard some one singing it in the steerage.  I was just a little girl, but I’ve never forgotten that ’Savourneen deelish,’ nor the way he sang it.”

“Was it a man’?” asked Sandy, huskily.

“No,” she said, half frowning in her effort to remember; “it was a boy—­a stowaway, I think.  They said he had tried to steal his way in a life-boat.”

“He had!” cried Sandy, raising his head and leaning toward her.  “He stole on board with only a few shillings and a bundle of clothes.  He sneaked his way up to a life-boat and hid there like a thief.  When they found him and punished him as he deserved, there was a little lady looked down at him and was sorry, and he’s traveled over all the years from then to now to thank her for it.”

Ruth drew back in amazement, and Sandy’s courage failed for a moment.  Then his face hardened and he plunged recklessly on: 

“I’ve blacked boots, and sold papers; I’ve fought dogs, and peddled, and worked on the railroad.  Many’s the time I’ve been glad to eat the scraps the workmen left on the track.  And just because a kind, good man—­God prosper his soul!—­saw fit to give me a home and an education, I turned a fool and dared to think I was a gentleman!”

For a moment pride held Ruth’s pity back.  Every tradition of her family threw up a barrier between herself and this son of the soil.

“Why did you come to Kentucky?” she asked.

“Why?” cried Sandy, too miserable to hold anything back.  “Because I saw the name of the place on your bag at the pier.  I came here for the chance of seeing you again, of knowing for sure there was something good and beautiful in the world to offset all the bad I’d seen.  Every page I’ve learned has been for you, every wrong thought I’ve put out of me mind has been to make more room for you.  I don’t even ask ye to be my friend; I only ask to be yours, to see ye sometime, to talk to you, and to keep ye first in my heart and to serve ye to the end.”

The vireo had stopped singing and was swinging on a bough above them.

Ruth sat very still and looked straight before her.  She had never seen a soul laid bare before, and the sight thrilled and troubled her.  All the petty artifices which the world had taught her seemed useless before this shining candor.