unnumbered little kindnesses, so eager did they now appear to
do her a good turn. Out of one cottage a woman was seen
coming burdened with a big roll of bedding; from others
children issued bearing cane chairs, basin and ewer, and so
on, and when we next looked into our room we found it swept
and scrubbed, mats on the floor, and quite comfortably
furnished.

After our meal in the small parlour, which had been given up
to us, the family having migrated into the kitchen, we sat for
an hour by the open window looking out on the dim forest and
saw the moon rise--a great golden globe above the trees--and
listened to the reeling of the nightjars. So many were the
birds, reeling on all sides, at various distances, that the
evening air seemed full of their sounds, far and near, like
many low, tremulous, sustained notes blown on reeds, rising
and falling, overlapping and mingling. And presently from
the bushes close by, just beyond the weedy, forlorn little
"orchard," sounded the rich, full, throbbing prelude to the
nightingale's song, and that powerful melody that in its
purity and brilliance invariably strikes us with surprise
seemed to shine out, as it were, against the background of
that diffused, mysterious purring of the nightjars, even as
the golden disc of the moon shone against and above the
darkening skies and dusky woods.

And as we sat there, gazing and listening, a human voice
came out of the night--a call prolonged and modulated like
the coo-ee of the Australian bush, far off and faint; but
the children in the kitchen heard it at the same time, for