quietly: "Don't go to the window, Baron. See, Mrs. Detlor is going to
sing."

Baron sat down. There was an instant's pause, in which George Hagar, the
host, felt a strong thrill of excitement. To him Mrs. Detlor seemed in a
dream, though her lips still smiled and her eyes wandered pleasantly over
the heads of the company. She was looking at none of them, but her body
was bent slightly toward the window, listening with it, as the deaf and
dumb do.

Her fingers picked the strings lightly, then warmly, and her voice rose,
clear, quaint and high:

"Look up an look aroun,
Fro you burden on de groun,
Reach up an git de crown,
When de Lord comes in de mornin--
When de Lord comes in de mornin!"

The voice had that strange pathos, veined with humor, which marks most
negro hymns and songs, so that even those present who had never heard an
Americanized negro sing were impressed and grew almost painfully quiet,
till the voice fainted away into silence.

With the last low impulsion, however, the voice from without began again
as if in reply. At the first note one of the young girls present made a
start for the window. Mrs. Detlor laid a hand upon her arm. "No," she
said, "you will spoil--the effect. Let us keep up the mystery."

There was a strange, puzzled look on her face, apparent most to George
Hagar. The others only saw the lacquer of amusement, summoned for the
moment's use.

"Sit down," she added, and she drew the young girl to her feet and passed
an arm round her shoulder. This was pleasant to the young girl. It singled
her out for a notice which would make her friends envious.

It was not a song coming to them from without--not a melody, but a kind of
chant, hummed first in a low sonorous tone, and then rising and falling in
weird undulations. The night was still, and the trees at the window gave
forth a sound like the monotonous s-sh of rain. The chant continued for
about a minute. While it lasted Mrs. Detlor sat motionless and her hands
lay lightly on the shoulders of the young girl. Hagar dropped his foot on
the floor at marching intervals--by instinct he had caught at the meaning
of the sounds. When the voice had finished, Mrs. Detlor raised her head
toward the window with a quick, pretty way she had, her eyes much shaded
by the long lashes. Her lips were parted in the smile which had made both
men and women call her merry, amiable and fascinating.

"You don't know what it is, of course,"