suggestions.

"Hush! she will sing again," whispered Adela. "It is the most delicious
contralto." Murmurs of objection to the voice being characterized at all
by any technical word, or even for a human quality, were heard.

"Let me find zis woman!" cried the prose enthusiast Mr. Pericles,
imperiously, with his bearskin thrown back on his shoulders, and forth
they stepped, following him.

In the middle of the wood there was a sandy mound, rising half the height
of the lesser firs, bounded by a green-grown vallum, where once an old
woman, hopelessly a witch, had squatted, and defied the authorities to
make her budge: nor could they accomplish the task before her witch-soul
had taken wing in the form of a black night-bird, often to be heard
jarring above the spot. Lank dry weeds and nettles, and great lumps of
green and gray moss, now stood on the poor old creature's place of
habitation, and the moon, slanting through the fir-clumps, was scattered
on the blossoms of twisted orchard-trees, gone wild again. Amid this
desolation, a dwarfed pine, whose roots were partially bared as they
grasped the broken bank that was its perch, threw far out a cedar-like
hand. In the shadow of it sat the fair singer. A musing touch of her
harp-strings drew the intruders to the charmed circle, though they could
discern nothing save the glimmer of the instrument and one set of fingers
caressing it. How she viewed their rather impertinent advance toward
her, till they had ranged in a half-circle nearer and nearer, could not
be guessed. She did not seem abashed in any way, for, having preluded,
she threw herself into another song.

The charm was now more human, though scarcely less powerful. This was a