He looked more puzzled than ever, and she observed it and went on:

"I will try to tell you, but you must not be cross like Pigott when
she cannot understand me. Sometimes I feel ever so much alone, as
though I was looking for something and could not find it, and then I
come and stand here and look at my mother's grave, and I get company
and am not lonely any more. That is all I know; I cannot tell you any
more. Do you think me silly? Pigott does."

"I think you are a very strange child. Are you not afraid to come here
alone at night?"

"Afraid--oh, no! Nobody comes here; the people in the village dare not
come here after dark, because they say that the ruins are full of
spirits. Jakes told me that. But I must be stupid; I cannot see them,
and I want so very much to see them. I hope it is not wrong, but I
told my father so the other day, and he turned white and was angry
with Pigott for giving me such ideas; but you know Pigott did not give
them to me at all. I am not afraid to come; I like it, it is so quiet,
and, if one listens enough in the quiet, I always think one may hear
something that other people do not hear."

"Do you hear anything, then?"

"Yes, I hear things, but I cannot understand them. Listen to the wind
in the branches of that tree, the chestnut, off which the leaf is
falling now. It says something, if only I could catch it."

"Yes, child, yes, you are right in a way; all Nature tells the same
eternal tale, if our ears were not stopped to its voices," he