All at once came to his ear through the night a strange something.
Whence or what it was he could not even conjecture. Was it a moan
of the river from below? Was it a lost music-tone that had wandered
from afar and grown faint? Was it one of those mysterious sounds he
had read of as born in the air itself, and not yet explained of
science? Was it the fluttered skirt of some angelic song of
lamentation?--for if the angels rejoice, they surely must lament!
Or was it a stilled human moaning? Was any wrong being done far
down in the white-gleaming meadows below, by the banks of the river
whose platinum-glimmer he could descry through the molten
amethystine darkness of the starry night?
Presently came a long-drawn musical moan: it must be the sound of
some muffled instrument! Verily night was the time for strange
things! Could sounds be begotten in the fir trees by the rays of
the hot sun, and born in the stillness of the following dark, as the
light which the diamond receives in the day glows out in the gloom?
There are parents and their progeny that never exist together!
Again the sound--hardly to be called sound! It resembled a
vibration of organ-pipe too slow and deep to affect the hearing;
only this rather seemed too high, as if only his soul heard it. He
would steal softly down the dumb stone-stair! Some creature might
be in trouble and needing help!
He crept back along the bartizan.
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