She was singing and walking hurriedly the gallery, when the stranger and her cousin came leisurely into the yard.
"Your cousin, Miss Ann, has a strange laugh."
"Indeed she has, sir; but we who know her understand it. She never laughs that unearthly laugh when her heart is at ease. I doubt if you have ever met such a person. I think the world has but one Alice. She is very young, very impressible, and some think very eccentric, very passionate and romantic to frenzy. There is something which impels me to tell you—but no, I have no right to do so. But this I must tell you; for you cannot have been in the house here so long without observing it. There is no congeniality between herself and brother; indeed, very little between her and any of her family. She is alone. She is one by herself; yes, one by herself in the midst of many; for the family is a large one. But remember, there is none like Alice. Be gentle to her and pity her; and pity her most when you hear that strange laugh."
There was music in the drawing-room, soft and gentle, and the accompanying voice was tremulous with suppressed emotion. Gradually it swells in volume until it fills the spacious apartment, and the clear notes from the tender trill rose grandly in full, clear tones, full of pathetic melody, and now they almost shriek. They cease—and the laugh, hysterical and shrill, echoes through the entire house. The judge was silent; but a close observer might have seen a slight contraction of the lips, and a slighter closing of the eyes. A moment after Alice entered the room, and there was a glance exchanged between her brother and herself. There was in it a meaning only for themselves.
"You have been riding, sir," he said to his guest, "and my sister tells me to the mound at the White Apple village. To those curious in such legends as are connected with its history, it is an interesting spot. All I know in relation to these, I acquired from a dreamy and solitary man employed by my father to fit myself and brother for college. He read French, and was fond of tracing all he could find in the writings of the historians of the first settlement of Louisiana and Mississippi, and of the history, habits, and customs of the aborigines of the country. He knew something of the adventures of De Soto and La Salle, and something of the traditions of the Natchez. He was a melancholy man, and perished by his own hand in the chamber that you occupy. My sister is curious in such matters, and from her researches in some old musty volumes she has found in the possession of an old European family, she has made quite a history of the Natchez, and from the old servants much of that of the first white or English occupants of this section. For myself, I have little curiosity in that way. My business forbids much reading of that kind, and indeed much of anything else, and I am glad that my tastes and my business accord. I would not exchange one crop of cotton grown on the village-field, for a perfect knowledge of the history of every Indian tribe upon the continent."
"I am no antiquarian, sir. A life on a plantation I suppose must be most irksome and monotonous to a young lady, unless she should have some resource besides her rural employments."
"Our only amusements, sir," said Alice, "are reading, riding, and music, with an occasional visit to a neighbor. I ride through the old forest and consult the great patriarchal trees, and they tell me many strange stories. When the ruthless axe has prostrated one of these forest monarchs, my good palfrey waits for me, and I count the concentric circles and learn his age. Some I have seen which have yielded to man's use or cupidity who have looked over the younger scions of the woods, and upon the waters of the mighty river a thousand years."
"Indeed, miss," replied the guest, "I had not supposed the natural life of any of our forest trees extended beyond three, or at most four centuries."
"The tulip or poplar-tree and the red-oak in the rich loam of these hills live long and attain to giant proportions. The vines which cling in such profusion to many of these are commensurate with them in time. They spring up at their bases and grow with them: the tree performing the kindly office of nurse, lifting them in her arms and carrying them until their summits, with united leaves, seem to kiss the clouds. They live and cling together through tempests and time until worn out with length of days, when they tumble and fall to the earth together, and together die. We all, Flora and Fauna, go down to the bosom of our common mother to rest in death. I love the companionship of the forest. There is an elevation of soul in this communion with incorruptible nature: there is sincerity and truth in the hills and valleys—in the trees and vines, and music—grand orchestral music—in the moaning of the limbs and leaves, played upon by the hurrying winds. I have prayed to be a savage, and to live in the woods."
"You are as usual, sister, very romantic to-night."