sound, as suddenly stop, and as suddenly start again.

While thus furtively making her survey the opening words of a song
greeted her ears from the front of the settle, in a melody and accent
of peculiar charm. There had been some singing before she came down; and
now the Scotchman had made himself so soon at home that, at the request
of some of the master-tradesmen, he, too, was favouring the room with a
ditty.

Elizabeth-Jane was fond of music; she could not help pausing to listen;
and the longer she listened the more she was enraptured. She had never
heard any singing like this and it was evident that the majority of the
audience had not heard such frequently, for they were attentive to a
much greater degree than usual. They neither whispered, nor drank, nor
dipped their pipe-stems in their ale to moisten them, nor pushed the mug
to their neighbours. The singer himself grew emotional, till she could
imagine a tear in his eye as the words went on:--

"It's hame, and it's hame, hame fain would I be,
O hame, hame, hame to my ain countree!
There's an eye that ever weeps, and a fair face will be fain,
As I pass through Annan Water with my bonnie bands again;
When the flower is in the bud, and the leaf upon the tree,
The lark shall sing me hame to my ain countree!"

There was a burst of applause, and a deep silence which was even more
eloquent than the applause. It was of such a kind that the snapping of a
pipe-stem too long for him by old Solomon Longways, who was one of those
gathered at the shady end of the room, seemed a harsh and irreverent
act. Then the ventilator in the window-pane spasmodically started off