The brother stood up. Their eyes exchanged a gentle gaze and tenderly
contracted.

"I will come presently," he replied, and was turning toward the water,
when he paused, threw a hand toward the steep wood across the pool, and
silently bade her listen.

The note he had remotely heard was rare on Bylow Hill since the town had
come in below, and one of the errands which oftenest brought the hill's
dwellers to this nook in solitary pairs was to hearken for that voice of
unearthly rapture,--a rapture above all melancholy and beyond all
mirth,--the call of the hermit thrush.

Now the waiting seemed in vain. The brother's hand sank, the sister
turned, and soon he saw her pass from view among the boughs as she wound
up the rambling path toward the three homes.

At the top she halted, still longing to hear at his side that marvellous
wood-note, and was just starting on once more, when from the same
quarter as before it came again, with new and fervent clearness. With
noiseless foot she sprang back down the bendings of the path, having no
other thought but to find her brother standing as she had left him, a
rapt hearer of the heavenly strain.

She reached the spot, but found no hearkening or standing form. The
young man's stalwart frame lay prone on the green bank, where he had
thrown himself the moment she had left his sight, and his face was
buried in the deep moss.