“In the sunset they are—‘ripping’!”
The faces of both were transfigured as they gazed breathlessly off at green, spangled foothills grading up into tinseled peaks, which, in turn, did homage to the mighty, misty Archangel—Mount Mansfield, in the distance, with wings of pearl.
“He seems to be waving his Big Trump at us,” said Pemrose.
“‘Say it with music’!” gasped the boy, his ear pricked towards the woods. “What—what’s that. A murmur? Queer murmur! Didn’t you hear it?”
It was, indeed, as if faint music—the vague ghost of murmuring music—was being wafted to them from that golden trump.
“Merciful hop-toads—green hop-toads!” It was Treff’s characteristic explosion. “What does it mean? Where does it come from—on the wind—up the mountain—from the woods?... But the wood doesn’t—own—it.”
“No-o,” gasped the girl. “It isn’t the trees—nor any bird—nor insect.”
“It’s as distinct from them—” the young aviator was breathing heavily—“as—my soul! as the voice of a song sparrow down by the surf. What.... The wind’s fetching it up to us—helping it. If—if this isn’t eerie!”
They stared blankly, boy and girl, each into the other’s face, trying to tear thence the meaning of it: of that wild, wandering organ note—ghost of disembodied music—a succession of piping notes stealing upon the breeze up the mountain—hypnotizing, beguiling.
Now the dim spruce wood below them became, as it seemed, a “roaring buckie”, a hollow, reverberating sea shell, faintly throbbing with old ocean’s murmur! Now, from it came a wee, high piping—undulating piping—as of elfin singing, against which no evening sound in Nature could hold its own for sweetness.