"Make de jolly little Irish one to sing by hisself!" called a woman
one night from the edge of the crowd. The invitation was taken up and
repeated on every side. Sandy, laughing and protesting, was pushed to
the front. Being thus suddenly forced into prominence, he suffered an
acute attack of stage fright.
"Chirp up there now and give us a tune!" cried some one behind him.
"Can't ye remember none?" asked another.
"Sure," said Sandy, laughing sheepishly; "but they all come wrong end
first."
Some one had thrust an old guitar in his hands, and he stood
nervously picking at the strings. He might have been standing there
still had not the moon come to his rescue. It climbed slowly out of
the sea and sent a shimmer of silver and gold over the water, across
the deck, and into his eyes. He forgot himself and the crowd. The
stream of mystical romance that flows through the veins of every true
Irishman was never lacking in Sandy. His heart responded to the
beautiful as surely as the echo answers the call.
He seized the guitar, and picking out the notes with clumsy, faltering
fingers, sang:
"Ah! The moment was sad when my love and I parted,
Savourneen deelish, signan O!"
His boyish voice rang out clear and true, softening on the refrain to
an indescribable tenderness that steeped the old song in the very
essence of mystery and love.
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