CHAPTER VI.
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 Till she release thee And bid unclose.
So, till day come And she be risen, Rest, rose, in prison And heart be dumb!" He snapped the stem and passed on, whistling the air of his ditty, and twirling the rose between finger and thumb.
"Men are all ninnies," Ruby decided as she dropped the blind; "and I thank the fates that framed me female and priced me high.