We hear the loon’s low call.
So let us, too, the silence keep,
And softly steal away,
To rest and sleep until the morn
Brings forth another day.”
“Betty, Betty!” Instead of allowing her friend to sleep Esther began shaking her nervously only a few moments after the closing of her song.
And Betty started suddenly, giving a little cry of pain and surprise, for evidently she had been dreaming and found it hard to come back to so strange a reality. Here she and Esther were alone in the winter woods not many miles from shelter and yet unable to find it, while she had been dreaming of herself as a poor half-frozen waif somewhere out in a city street listening to strains of music, which were not of Esther’s song but of some instrument. The girl rubbed her eyes and laughed.
“Dear me, Esther, it’s too cold to sleep, isn’t it? Let us put some more wood on our fire and stay awake and talk. I think the Winter Manitou, Peboan, must have been visiting me with the wind playing the strings of his harp, for I have just dreamed I was listening to music.”
“You didn’t dream it; I wasn’t asleep and I heard it also. There, listen!”
The two girls caught hold of one another’s hands and silently they stared ahead of them through the opening in their curious, Esquimaux-like tent. Could anything be more improbable and yet without doubt the notes of a violin could be heard approaching nearer and nearer.