It was a sweet, fresh autumn morning in Lonesome Valley. Before night the deer would bellow reply to the hunters’ rifles, and the mountain-goat call to its unknown gods; but now there was only the wild duck skimming the river, and the high hilltop rising and fading into the mist, the ardent sun, and again that strange cry—
“Fingall!—Oh, Fingall! Fingall!”
Two men, lounging at a fire on a ledge of the hills, raised their eyes to the mountain-side beyond and above them, and one said presently:
“The second time. It’s a woman’s voice, Pierre.” Pierre nodded, and abstractedly stirred the coals about with a twig.
“Well, it is a pity—the poor Cynthie,” he said at last.
“It is a woman, then. You know her, Pierre—her story?”
“Fingall! Fingall!—Oh, Fingall!”
Pierre raised his head towards the sound; then after a moment, said:
“I know Fingall.”
“And the woman? Tell me.”