There were no words to this mournful, heart-breaking air, that ended with a wail, long and weird.
"Mother," I called, the door being open between our rooms, "Mother, did you hear me singing just now?"
"Well, yes," she replied, "since I am not deaf, I heard you very plainly."
"Oh," I cried, "can you tell me what it was I sang?"
My mother raised her head and looked in at me surprisedly: "Why, what is the matter with you, child—aren't you awake, that you don't know what you are doing? You were singing 'the lament' Joe Barrett sang in the French cemetery."
"Oh!" I cried, in late-coming recognition, "you are right." I scrambled up, and thrusting back my hair from my face, started to sing it again, and lo! not a note could I catch. Again and again I tried; I shut my eyes and strove to recall that wail—no use. Then, remembering what a memory my mother had for airs heard but once or twice, I called: "Dear, can't you start 'the lament' for me, I have lost it entirely?"
She opened her lips, paused, looked surprised, then said, positively: "I might never have heard it, I can't get either its beginning or ending."
I sprang from the bed, and in bare, unslippered feet, ran to the piano in the front room—no use; I never again heard, waking or sleeping, another note of "the lament."
Mother called out presently: "Do you know what time it is? Go back and finish your sleep, it's not quite six o'clock."
As I obediently returned to my room, I said, in a troubled voice: "What do you suppose it means, mother?" and as she snuggled her head back upon her pillow, she laughingly answered: "Oh, I suppose it's a sign you are going to hear from Joe Barrett soon. If you do, I hope it won't be anything bad, poor fellow!" for mother liked the "big Irish boy," as she called him.