Then the voice of the singer rang clear again—a pilgrim rejoicing, shouting—such a glad pilgrim, and again he felt himself impelled to the heights from which it had come—felt himself a creature of some fresh-born force he could no more fathom than explain.
A wild cat screamed down the creek. The three boys thumped the floor, seeking in their sleep to destroy the mosquitoes. The dogs scratched under the house. The man snored. Once the baby cried and the mother soothed it.
These voices and sounds seemed a part of the secrets of the night and of the strange awakening that possessed him with the pleasure and pain of its mystery.
There was a sound, however, that came with the first pink of the morning that seemed in some unknown way to hold the key to the mystery of his strangely aroused hunger—a hunger born whether for good or ill he knew not.
With the first stirring of life at the new day, a song bird just at the edge of the clearing sent out its call, clear as the voice of the singer on the bluff and, in the imagination of the inquiring youth, like it, glad and unafraid.
But the bird was calling for a mate—one of its own kind—one which would answer its call.
Again the call rang out penetrating and joyful.
The young man listened. Then a smile of satisfaction lit his homely face, for from somewhere down in the tangle of the creek banks, one of its own kind was answering the call.
The hidden singer in the clearing called again, even throwing more life and gladness into the song. Again the answer came from the unseen one of like kind, a little closer now. They were moving toward each other. The silent listener had not made a study of birds. Yet now he was quite sure that somewhere they would meet in the wide expanse of over-laced branches and would mate.
Again his mind went back to the singer of the bluff—and her challenging call. Who or what manner of woman was she? He wondered.