Their chant too was full of courage, hope and promise, and his spirits lifted as he listened.

They were watching over him, guarding him from evil, and he felt, at last, that they were telling him something.
It is not always easy to know the exact burden of a song, even if it is uplifting, and Robert listened a long time, trying to decipher exactly what the good spirits were saying to him.

It was just such a song as they sang to him before the pirate ship came, saving one strain and that was most important.

There was no underlying note of warning.

Hunt for it as he would, with his fullest power of hearing, he could detect no trace of it.