SIEGE IS LAID TO RUBY.

The sun was higher by some hours--high enough to be streaming brightly
over the wall into the courtlage at Sheba--when Ruby awoke from a
dreamless sleep. As she lifted her head from the pillow and felt the
fatigue of last night yet in her limbs, she was aware also of a rich
tenor voice uplifted beneath her window. Air and words were strange to
her, and the voice had little in common with the world as she knew it.
Its exile on that coast was almost pathetic, and it dwelt on the notes
with a feeling of a warmer land.

"O south be north--
O sun be shady--
Until my lady
Shall issue forth:
Till her own mouth
Bid sun uncertain
To draw his curtain,
Bid south be south."

She stole out of bed and went on tiptoe to the window, where she drew
the blind an inch aside. The stranger's footstep had ceased to crunch
the gravel, and he stood now just beneath her, before the monthly-rose
bush. Throughout the winter a blossom or two lingered in that sheltered
corner; and he had drawn the nearest down to smell at it.

"O heart, her rose,
I cannot ease thee