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-circle nearer and nearer, could not be
guessed. She did not seem abashed in any way, for, having preluded, she
threw herself into another song.

The charm was now more human, though scarcely less powerful. This was a
different song from the last: it was not the sculptured music of the old
school, but had the richness and fulness of passionate blood that marks
the modern Italian, where there is much dallying with beauty in the thick
of sweet anguish. Here, at a certain passage of the song, she gathered
herself up and pitched a nervous note, so shrewdly triumphing, that, as
her voice sank to rest, her hearers could not restrain a deep murmur of
admiration.

Then came an awkward moment. The ladies did not wish to go, and they were
not justified in stopping. They were anxious to speak, and they could not
choose the word to utter. Mr. Pericles relieved them by moving forward
and dof