I'm a pilgrim and I'm a stranger;
I can tarry, I can tarry but a night!
Her voice was clear and steady. There was the same triumphant ring, the same quaver and lengthening of certain syllables. But the strong buoyancy had given place to something suggestive of an echo song, and it seemed to the listening lever that the message came from some more distant heights than the bluff.
"That's the sample," she announced. "If it sounds all right I'll begin again and sing through from the first—sing it all. But Abraham, put the big shawl, that's on the foot of the bed, up here handy."
"Are you cold, Ann?"
"No, not yet—but I feel—feel strange."
He put the shawl beside her.
"It's handy now. I'll sing."
Again she sang the lines "I'm a pilgrim—I'm a stranger——" She was singing slower now. When she came to the words "I can tarry," she stopped a moment. "The shawl, Abraham, wrap it about me tightly."
"Let me call your mother," he said as he wrapped the shawl about her.