ummer and winter, but in the spring, while the
snow was melting up in the mountains, it overflowed the nearest land
and turned the whole glen into a broad and shallow river. It was easy to
cross, however; a light foot might jump from stone to stone, and be over
in a minute. Not the hind herself could be lighter on her foot than Aasa
was; and even in the spring-flood it was her wont to cross and recross
the brook, and to sit dreaming on a large stone against which the water
broke incessantly, rushing in white torrents over its edges.

Here she sat one fair summer day--the day after Vigfusson's departure.
It was noon, and the sun stood high over the forest. The water murmured
and murmured, babbled and whispered, until at length there came a sudden
unceasing tone into its murmur, then another, and it sounded like a
faint whispering song of small airy beings. And as she tried to listen,
to fix the air in her mind, it all ceased again, and she heard but
the monotonous murmuring of the brook. Everything seemed so empty and
worthless, as if that faint melody had been the world of the moment. But
there it was again; it sung and sung, and the birch overhead took up the
melody and rustled it with its leaves, and the grasshopper over in the
grass caught it and whirred it with her wings. The water, the trees, the
air, were full of it. What a strange melody!

Aasa well knew that every brook and river has its Neck, besides hosts
of little water-sprites. She had heard also that in the moonlight at
midsummer, one might chance to see them rocking in bright little
shells, playing among the pebbles, or dancing on the large leaves of the
water-lily. And that they could sing also, she doubted not; it was their
voices she heard through the murmuring of the brook. Aasa eagerly bent
forward and gazed down into the water: the faint song grew louder,
paused suddenly, and sprang into life again; and its sound was so sweet,
so wonderfully alluring! Down there in the water, where a stubborn
pebble kept chafing a precipitous little side current, clear tiny
pearl-drops would leap up from the stream, and float half-wonderingly
downward from rapid to rapid, until they lost themselves in the whirl
of some stronger current. Thus sat Aasa and gazed and gazed, and in one
moment she seemed to see what in the next moment she saw not. Then a
sudden great hush stole through the forest, and in the hush she could
hear the silence calling her name. It was so long