"I am dumb," replied Turpin; "I like a sweet voice as well as another."
Clear as the note of a bird, yet melancholy as the distant dole of a vesper-bell, arose the sound of that sweet voice from the wood. A fragment of a Spanish gipsy song it warbled: Luke knew it well. Thus ran the romance:
LA GITANILLA
By the Guadalquivir,
Ere the sun be flown,
By that glorious river
Sits a maid alone.
Like the sunset splendor
Of that current bright,
Shone her dark eyes tender
As its witching light.
Like the ripple flowing,
Tinged with purple sheen,
Darkly, richly glowing,
Is her warm cheek seen.
'Tis the Gitanilla
By the stream doth linger,
In the hope that eve
Will her lover bring her.
See, the sun is sinking;
All grows dim, and dies;
See, the waves are drinking
Glories of the skies.
Day's last lustre playeth
On that current dark;
Yet no speck betrayeth
His long looked-for bark.
'Tis the hour of meeting!
Nay, the hour is past;
Swift the time is fleeting!
Fleeteth hope as fast.
Still the Gitanilla
By the stream doth linger,
In the hope that night
Will her lover bring her.
The tender trembling of a guitar was heard in accompaniment of the ravishing melodist.
The song ceased.
"Where is the bird?" asked Turpin.
"Move on in silence, and you shall see," said Luke; and keeping upon the turf, so that his horse's tread became inaudible, he presently arrived at a spot where, through the boughs, the object of his investigation could plainly be distinguished, though he himself was concealed from view.
Upon a platform of rock, rising to the height of the trees, nearly perpendicularly from the river's bed, appeared the figure of the gipsy maid. Her footstep rested on the extreme edge of the abrupt cliff, at whose base the water boiled in a deep whirlpool, and the bounding chamois could not have been more lightly poised. One small hand rested upon her guitar, the other pressed her brow. Braided hair, of the jettiest dye and sleekest texture, was twined around her brow in endless twisted folds: