and rich, so light and sweet. And
now, to add to the marvel, they heard a harp accompaniment, the strings
being faintly touched, but with firm fingers. A woman's voice: on that
could be no dispute. Tell me, what opens heaven more flamingly to heart
and mind, than the voice of a woman, pouring clear accordant notes to
the blue night sky, that grows light blue to the moon? There was no
flourish in her singing. All the notes were firm, and rounded, and
sovereignly distinct. She seemed to have caught the ear of Night, and
sang confident of her charm. It was a grand old Italian air, requiring
severity of tone and power. Now into great mournful hollows the voice
sank steadfastly. One soft sweep of the strings succeeded a deep final
note, and the hearers breathed freely.

"Stradella!" said the Greek, folding his arms.

The ladies were too deeply impressed to pursue their play with him. Real
emotions at once set aside the semi-credence they had given to their own
suggestions.

"Hush! she will sing again," whispered Adela. "It is the most delicious
contralto." Murmurs of objection to the voice being characterized at all
by any technical word, or even for a human quality, were heard.

"Let me find zis woman!" cried the prose enthusiast Mr. Pericles,
imperiously, with his bearskin thrown back on his shoulders, and forth
they stepped, following him.

In the middle of the wood there was a sandy mound, rising half the
height of the lesser firs, bounded by a green-grown vallum, where
once an old woman, hopelessly a witch, had squatted, and defied the
authorities to make her budge: nor could they accomplish the task before
her witch-soul had taken wing in the form of a black night-bird, often
to be heard jarring above the spot. Lank dry weeds and nettles, and
great lumps of green and gray moss, now stood on the poor old creature's
place of habitation, and the moon, slanting through the fir-clumps, was
scattered on the blossoms of twisted orchard-trees, gone wild again.
Amid this desolation, a dwarfed pine, whose roots were partially bared
as they grasped the broken bank that was its perch, threw far out a
cedar-like hand. In the shadow of it sat the fair singer. A musing touch
of her harp-strings drew the intruders to the charmed circle, though
they could discern nothing save the glimmer of the instrument and one
set of fingers caressing it. How she viewed their rather impertinent
advance toward her, till they had ranged in a half