"Stay; I thought that I heard it a moment ago! Yes, I hear it again.
Hear you not the note of some waterfowl?"
Yes, Annette did hear it; but she could not say from what kind of bird the singing came.
"Well, my sweet mistress, the ripples which you now see swinging in upon the sand come from the same bird whose song you hear. The bird itself is the swan, made sacred to love."
"Oh, I remember something of the legend, Julie. Repeat it to me, s'il vous plait."
"Well; there was once a beautiful maiden of the plains, whom many of the bravest and most noble of the chiefs adored; but she disdained their wooing, for she loved with a passion that absorbed her soul and body a young man with hair like the corn leaves when, after rain, the sunlight is shot through the stalks. He stayed some days in the lodge of the chief, her father; and while his heart was yet full of love for the peach-skinned, star-eyed maiden, he was obliged to go away with his white brethren, who had come from over seas to trace the source and flow of some of our mighty rivers. The parting of the lovers was like the breaking of heart-strings. The maiden pined, and through all the summer sat among the flowers sighing for her darling with the amber-tinted hair. Her sleep refreshed her not, for through the night she dreamt of naught but the parting, and of the sorrow in his sky-blue eyes. In the day, her eyes were ever looking wistfully along the trail by which he had come, or gazing, with a woe past skill to describe, out along the stretch by which he had gone from her sight. Late in the autumn, when the petals of the rose and the daisy began to fall, and summer birds prepared for the flight to the south, the Great Spirit came softly down from a cumulus cloud and stood beside the maiden, as she sat upon the fading prairie. He told her of a glorious land out in the heavens, where spring endured for ever, and true lovers were joined to have no more parting; and when she looked yearningly towards the region at which he pointed, he asked her if she would go thither with him. With joy unutterable she consented, and giving her hand into his, the two rose in the air and disappeared through a piled mass of rosy cloud. When she reached paradise, knowledge was given to her of the loves of maidens upon the earth, and reflecting how bitter her lot had been, she besought the God of Thunder, and the Ruler of the Spheres, to permit her to pass a portion of each year upon the earth, in order to watch over and console love-sick virgins who were separated from their betrothed. To her request the god consented, giving to the maiden the figure of a swan. Since that time she visits the earth a short time after midsummer day; and you can hear her singing upon our great inland waters during the night, at any place between the lonesome stretches of the far north to the great southern lakes, from the middle of summer till the first golden gleam comes in the maple leaf. Then she arises, and the hunter marvels at the beautiful bird with the white pinions which flies up into the heavens, and passes beyond the highest clouds."
"Harken now, mademoiselle; it sings again." And lo! from over the hushed face of the water came the notes of the guardian maiden.
"The song is not plaintive and sorrow-laden, as I have been told the swan's song is, Julie."
"No; the singing of the swan soothes and consoles. Hark again to it."
"Oh, it is divine, Julie, and creeps into my heart, filling me with comfort and exquisite peace."
"I doubt not, mademoiselle, that the maiden came to this lake to cheer your sorrowful spirit, and to give you surety that neither you nor your lover stand in danger."