CHAPTER VIII.

After this the Child would often stand gazing out over the sea or into the heavens. He felt as if he were always on the point of finding something, yet all his seeking was full of hope and without disquiet; for after that dream he never doubted that one day he should learn the words of the Song.

One morning, as he was looking out over the sea, watching the dimpling and sparkling of the laughing waves, and dreaming about his dream, he descried something dark rising and falling on the waters. As he watched it, it came nearer, and he perceived that it was a little round wooden box; and to his great delight he saw that the advancing tide would soon lay it at his feet. He could not wait until it reached the dry beach, but plashed through the waves, caught it in his arms, and carried it in triumph to the shingly ridge above the sands. There he seated himself to examine his treasure: he could not help in some way connecting it with his dream; he thought the sweet Singers must have sent it him from the sky. The little box had something of the shape of the shells of his friends of the sabella family, and it sounded hollow, but it was closed at both ends with a flat piece of wood. At first he could find no way of opening it; so he began to admire the beautiful flowers and fruits and leaves which were carved in wreaths and garlands round the tube. The fruits and flowers were strange to the Child, and he wondered if they were like those which grew in the home of the sweet Singers.

At length as he turned the tube over and over a little muffled voice came to him from inside and said, "Put me into the sea again until to-morrow morning, and I will open the box for you."

"Who are you?" asked the Child.

"I am a teredo," replied the little muffled voice. "I have been very busy for some days boring through the hinge of this strange box, and in a few hours I shall quite have finished my work, if you will throw me into the sea, so that I may have something to drink; for I can assure you people who work as hard as I do get very thirsty."

So the Child took the box to his rock-pool, and laid it on a ledge beneath the water, where he thought it would be safe from being washed away by the next tide. He could not bear to lose sight of his new treasure; he did not know what might be inside.

Whilst he was waiting he found the teredo a very amusing companion.

"What do you look like?" he asked.

"My own house is not so large as one of your finger-nails," replied the teredo; "but I have a long winding passage leading from it to the sea outside, and through this, however deep I am buried, I keep myself provided with air and water by means of a long trunk which I possess."

"Do you often bury yourself very deep?" asked the Child.

"We are seldom engaged on such a trifling affair as this," replied the teredo; "we eat through ships and piers, and piles made of the hard trunks of oaks."

The Child had no idea of what ships and piers were, and the little busy creature was quite ready to tell him all she knew; so all day he sat listening to her stories, which to him were wonderful fairy tales. And when the darkness came, he tripped joyously up to his cave to sleep away as fast as he could the night which was to bring the morning when the strange box would fly open.

But on his little bed he kept wondering what was inside. Was it a beautiful little living being which was to be his companion? was it a tiny ship like the great ones the teredo had been talking about, only made to sail in the air, and to carry him up to where the sweet Singers lived? So he fell asleep full of happy visions.

The next morning he could scarcely eat his breakfast or say a word to the flowers, he was so eager to reach the place where his treasure lay, and see if it were safe. But the sea was still covering the beach, and it was some time before the waves were curbed in, and ceased to dash into the rock-pool.

At length the tide drew back, and the Child clambered over the wet rocks to the pool.

There, safe on the ledge where he had placed it, lay the little carved tube. He took it carefully out of the water: the little teredo had done her work well, and in an instant the cover flew open. His heart fluttered fast as he watched to see what would happen next.

But no living creature sprang out; only a roll of parchments, marked all over with strange twisted black lines, fell on the rocks. The Child thrust in his little hand and felt all through the tube, but there was nothing more within, and he was so disappointed he had scarcely heart to thank the teredo.

Tears of vexation would fall fast over his face, and at length he hid his face in his hands and sobbed aloud. His hopes had soared so high! Soon his sobs subsided into quiet weeping. All the creatures tried to comfort him; he felt grateful to them, but still they could not dry his tears.

At length they gave up speaking to him, and through the silence came on his ear the sound of the old sweet solemn Song. Then the Child thought of his dream, of the Singers in heaven, and of the loving Voice, and he looked up on the sparkling sea and the sunny blue sky, and smiled through his tears. He felt ashamed of having been so cast down, and quietly took up the roll of parchments from the rocks.

It was traced all over with black figures, delicately and carefully drawn; but the Child could not see in them anything more than the delicate traceries he had often observed on the shells and flowers; and turn it over and gaze on it as he would, he could find nothing in it but a roll of dead leaves.

Nevertheless he took it with him to his cave (leaving the cover to the teredo as an acknowledgment of her kindness), and carefully replaced it in the wooden tube. At all events the little carved basket was beautiful, and still he could not help linking it with his dream, and with the heavenly Singers who knew the words of the Song.

_PART II.--THE WORDS OF THE SONG._