"Perhaps it's both our imaginations," he suggested.
"No. We both do lots of imagining, but it never overlaps. When it does, it shows it's so."
Perhaps I was not very clear, but he seemed to understand.
Since then I have heard it now and again, this singing of the rain-swept woods. Not often, for it is a capricious thing, or perhaps I ought rather to say I do not understand the manner of its uprising. Rain alone will not bring it to pass, wind alone will not, and sometimes even when they are importuned by wind and rain together the woods are silent. Perhaps, too, it is not every stretch of woods that can sing, or at all seasons. In winter they can whistle, and sigh, and creak, but I am sure that when I have heard these singing voices the trees have always had their full leafage. But however it comes about, I am glad of the times that I have heard it. And whenever I read tales of the Wild Huntsman and all his kind, there come into my mind as an interpreting background memories of wonderful black nights and storm-ridden woods swept by overtones of distant and elusive sound.
We did not hear the woods sing that day. Perhaps there was not wind enough, or perhaps the woods on the "home piece" are not big enough, for it chances that I have never heard the sound there.
As we came up the lane at dusk we saw the glimmer of the house lights.
"Doesn't that look good?" I said to Jonathan. "And won't it be good when we are all dry and in front of the fire and you have your pipe and I'm making toast?"
I am perfectly sure that Jonathan agreed with me, but what he said was, "I thought you came out for pleasure."
"Well, can't I come home for pleasure too?" I asked.