The underbrush disappeared, and a brown carpet of needles and cones
spread far under the shade. The leafy rustle of the deciduous trees
ceased, and a majestic stillness, deeper than thought, pervaded the
place. At the clearing just within this deeper wood Agatha paused, sat
down on a stone and took Danny's head in her lap. The dog looked up
into her face with the wistful, melancholy gaze of his kind,
inarticulate yet eloquent.

The sun was nearly at zenith, and bright flecks of light lay here and
there over the brown earth. As Agatha grew accustomed to the shade, it
seemed pleasant and not at all uncheerful--the gaiety of sunlight
subdued only to a softer tone. The resolution which had brought her
thither returned. She stood up under the dome of pines and began
softly to sing, trying her voice first in single tones, then a scale or
two, a trill. At first her voice was not clear, but as she continued
it emerged from its sheath of huskiness clear and flutelike, and liquid
as the notes of the thrushes that inhabited the wood. The pleasure of
the exercise grew, and presently, warbling her songs there in the
otherwise silent forest, Agatha became conscious of a strange
accompaniment. Pausing a moment, she perceived that the grove was
vocal with tone long after her voice had ceased. It was not exactly an
echo, but a slowly receding resonance, faint duplications and
multiplications of her voice, gently floating into the thickness of the
forest.

Charmed, like a child who discovers some curious phenomenon of nature,
Agatha tried her voice again and again, listening, between whiles, to
the ghostly tones reverberating among the pines. She sang the slow
majestic "Lascia ch'io pianga," which has tested every singer's voice
since Haendel wrote it; and then, curious, she tried the effect of the
aerial sounding-board with quick, brilliant runs up and down the full
range of the voice. But the effect was more beautiful with something
melodious and somewhat slow; and there came to her mind an
old-fashioned song which, as a girl, she had often sung with her mother:

"Oh! that we two were maying
Down the stream of the soft spring breeze."

She sang the stanza through, softly, walking up and down among the
pines. Danny, at first, walked up and down beside her gravely, and
then lay down in the middle of the path, keeping an eye on Agatha's
movements. Her voice, pitched at its softest, now seemed to be
infinitely enla