“’Tis Lucy—­the poor girl!  Stay, Guy, and hear her music.  She does not often sing now-a-days.  She is quite melancholy, and it’s a long time since I’ve heard her guitar.  She sings and plays sweetly; her poor father had her taught everything before he failed, for he was very proud of her, as well he might be.”

They sunk again into the covert, the outlaw muttering sullenly at the interruption which had come between him and his purposes.  The music touched him not, for he betrayed no consciousness; when, after a few brief preliminary notes on the instrument, the musician breathed forth the little ballad which follows:—­

    LUCY’S SONG.

    I.

    “I met thy glance of scorn,
      And then my anguish slept,
    But, when the crowd was gone,
      I turned away and wept.

    II.

    “I could not bear the frown
      Of one who thus could move,
    And feel that all my fault,
      Was only too much love.

    III.

    “I ask not if thy heart
      Hath aught for mine in store,
    Yet, let me love thee still,
      If thou canst yield no more.

    IV.

    “Let me unchidden gaze,
      Still, on the heaven I see,
    Though all its happy rays
      Be still denied to me.”

A broken line of the lay, murmured at intervals for a few minutes after the entire piece was concluded, as it were in soliloquy, indicated the sad spirit of the minstrel.  She did not remain long at the window; in a little while the song ceased, and the light was withdrawn from the apartment.  The musician had retired.

“They say, Guy, that music can quiet the most violent spirit, and it seems to have had its influence upon you.  Does she not sing like a mocking-bird?—­is she not a sweet, a true creature?  Why, man! so forward and furious but now, and now so lifeless! bestir ye!  The night wanes.”

The person addressed started from his stupor, and, as if utterly unconscious of what had been going on, ad interim, actually replied to the speech of his companion made a little while prior to the appearance and music of the young girl, whose presence at that moment had most probably prevented strife and, possibly, bloodshed.  He spoke as if the interruption had made only a momentary break in the sentence which he now concluded:—­

“He lies at the point of my knife, under my hands, within my power, without chance of escape, and I am to be held back—­kept from striking—­kept from my revenge—­and for what?  There may be little gain in the matter—­it may not bring money, and there may be some risk!  If it be with you, Munro, to have neither love nor hate, but what you do, to do only for the profit and spoil that come of it, it is not so with me.  I can both love and hate; though it be, as it has been, that I entertain the one feeling in vain, and am restrained from the enjoyment of the other.”