coloured.

He relished his walk so well that he repeated it next day. He was a
little earlier at the cottage than on the day before, and he could hear
the children upstairs singing to a regular measure, and clapping out the
time with their hands.

"Still, there is no sound of any musical instrument," he said, listening
at the corner, "and yet I saw the performing hands again as I came by.
What are the children singing? Why, good Lord, they can never be singing
the multiplication table?"

They were, though, and with infinite enjoyment. The mysterious face had
a voice attached to it, which occasionally led or set the children right.
Its musical cheerfulness was delightful. The measure at length stopped,
and was succeeded by a murmuring of young voices, and then by a short
song which he made out to be about the current month of the year, and
about what work it yielded to the labourers in the fields and farmyards.
Then there was a stir of little feet, and the children came trooping and
whooping out, as on the previous day. And again, as on the previous day,
they all turned at the garden-gate, and kissed their hands--evidently to
the face on the window-sill, though Barbox Brothers from his retired post
of disadvantage at the corner could not see it.

But, as the children dispersed, he cut off one small straggler--a brown-
faced boy with flaxen hair--and said to him:

"Come here, little one. Tell me, whose house is that?"

The child, with one swarthy arm held up across his eyes, half in shyness,