but we both strained
our ears listening to something, we did not know what. Then there came
a strange soft whisper which filled the air all about us, and I
thought I heard somebody calling my name.

"They are calling you, Jamie," whispered Mabel.

"Calling me? Who?" said I.

"Up there in the tree. No, not there. It is down in the brook.
Everywhere."

"Oh," cried I, with a forced laugh. "We are two great children, Mabel.
It is nothing."

Suddenly all was silent once more; but the wood-stars and violets at
my feet gazed at me with such strange, wistful eyes, that I was almost
frightened.

"You shouldn't have done that, Jamie," said Mabel. "You killed them."

"Killed what?"

"The voices, the strange, small voices."

"My dear girl," said I, as I took Mabel's hands and helped her to
rise. "I am afraid we are both losing our senses. Come, let us go. The
sun is already down. It must be after tea-time."

"But you know we were talking about them," whispered she, still with
the same fascinated gaze in her eyes. "Ah, there, take care! Don't
step on that violet. Don't you see how its mute eyes implore you to
spare its life?"

"Yes, dear, I see," answered I; and I drew Mabel's arm through mine,
and we hurried down the wood-path, not daring to look back, for we had
both a feeling as if some one was walking close behind us, in our
steps.

II.

It was a little after ten, I think, when I left the professor's house,
where I had been spending the evening, and started on my homeward way.

As I walked along the road the thought of Mabel haunted me. I
wondered whether I ever should be a professor, like her father, and
ended with concluding that the next best thing to being one's self a
professor would be to be a professor's son-in-law. But, somehow, I
wasn't at all sure that Mabel cared anything about me.

"Things are not what they seem," I murmured to myself, "and the real
Mabel may be a very different creature from the Mabel whom I know."

There was not much comfort in that thought, but nevertheless I could
not get rid of it. I glanced up to the big round face of the moon,
which had a large ring of mist about its neck; and looking more
closely I thought I saw a huge floundering body, of which the moon was
the head, crawling heavily across the sky, and stretching a long misty
arm after me. I hurried on, not caring to look right or left; and I
suppose I must have taken the wrong turn, for as I lifted my eyes, I
fou