y overcame their disinclination, whatever its cause, and
so I came into possession--for four months--of that silent old house,
with the white lilacs, and the drowsy barns, and the old piano, and the
strange orchard; and, as the summer came on, and the year changed its
name from May to June, I used to lie under the apple-trees in the
afternoons, dreamily reading some old book, and through half-sleepy
eyelids watching the silken shimmer of the Sound.

I had lived in the old house for about a month, when one afternoon a
strange thing happened to me. I remember the date well. It was the
afternoon of Tuesday, June 13th. I was reading, or rather dipping here
and there, in Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_. As I read, I remember
that a little unripe apple, with a petal or two of blossom still
clinging to it, fell upon the old yellow page. Then I suppose I must
have fallen into a dream, though it seemed to me that both my eyes and
my ears were wide open, for I suddenly became aware of a beautiful
young voice singing very softly somewhere among the leaves. The singing
was very frail, almost imperceptible, as though it came out of the air.
It came and went fitfully, like the elusive fragrance of sweetbrier--as
though a girl was walking to and fro, dreamily humming to herself in the
still afternoon. Yet there was no one to be seen. The orchard had never
seemed more lonely. And another fact that struck me as strange was that
the words that floated to me out of the aerial music were French, half
sad, half gay snatches of some long-dead singer of old France, I looked
about for the origin of the sweet sounds, but in vain. Could it be the
birds that were singing in French in this strange orchard? Presently the
voice seemed to come quite close to me, so near that it might have been
the voice of a dryad singing to me out of the tree against which I was
leaning. And this time I distinctly caught the words of the sad little
song:

_"Chante, rossignol, chante,
Toi qui as le coeur gai;
Tu as le coeur a rire,
Moi, je l'ai-t-a pleurer."_

But, though the voice was at my shoulder, I could see no one, and then
the singing stopped with what sounded like a sob; and a moment or two
later I seemed to hear a sound of sobbing far down the orchard. Then
there followed silence, and I was left to ponder on the strange
occurrence. Naturally, I decided that it was just a day-dream between
sleeping and waking over the pages of an old book