It was such a strange, eerie sound that they stopped the horses to listen to the weird chanting to the tune of the bleak wind.
“Gosh, how crazy-like it sounds? Though pretty, too!” snorted Jinkins, as they drove on nearer and nearer into the wood, and came close enough for a sight of the singer.
Eva, for it was she, was kneeling down, a slim, drenched figure, golden-haired and flower-crowned with the blossoming briers and scarlet leaves, the rain pouring down upon her through the bare boughs overhead, while she sang a weird song.
“I swan to goodness, I never had sech a turn in my life, Goody, as when I see that awful sight—little Eva that we always sot sech store by, a-singing like mad,” Sam confided to Goody that evening over the blazing logs that he had made a second trip to get.
For the first thing he did was to gather up the poor, drenched girl in his arms and press her to his warm heart, while he said huskily to his man:
“Fust thing we do, Jinkins, let us carry this poor lamb home to Goody, and make a second trip for the logs. I don’t know how she come to be here crazy, but it’s little Eva that we all love, and her gran’ma was my wife’s dearest friend!”
Little Eva was melancholy mad. The weight of woe had turned her brain. Gentle and irresponsive as an infant, she suffered Goody Brown to undress her by a cheerful fire, after feeding her with brown bread and new milk, and put her to bed between warm white blankets.
Then, overpowered by weariness, she slept almost as soundly as the dead.
Goody wept in sympathy as she wrapped the scratched and bleeding little hands in salve and linen bandages, saying tenderly: