Holding back a branch of pine, he watched the movements of the girl at her wheel with absorbed fascination.
Suddenly her sweet lips parted, and she sang a weird, wild melody, that seemed, like a running torrent, to have fallen from the crests of the mountains, bringing with it echoes from the furthest summits, mingled with soft wailings of a mournful wind.
Her voice was pure as the ring of fine crystal--deep, liquid, and tender, with a restrained passion in it that stirred Errington's heart and filled it with a strange unrest and feverish yearning,--emotions which were new to him, and which, while he realized their existence, moved him to a sort of ashamed impatience.

He would have willingly left his post of observation now, if only for the sake of shaking off his unwonted sensations; and he took a step or two backwards for that purpose, when Lorimer, in his turn, laid a detaining hand on his shoulder.
"For Heaven's sake, let us hear the song through!" he said in subdued tones.

"What a voice! A positive golden flute!" His rapt face betokened his enjoyment, and Errington, nothing loth, still lingered, his eyes fixed on the white-robed slim figure framed in the dark old rose-wreathed window--the figure that swayed softly with the motion of the wheel and the rhythm of the song,--while flickering sunbeams sparkled now and then on the maiden's dusky gold hair, or touched up a warmer tint on her tenderly flushed cheeks, and fair neck, more snowy than the gown she wore.

Music poured from her lips as from the throat of a nightingale.

The words she sang were Norwegian, and her listeners understood nothing of them; but the melody,--the pathetic appealing melody,--soul-moving as all true melody must be, touched the very core of their hearts, and entangled them in a web of delicious reveries.
"Talk of Ary Scheffer's Gretchen!" murmured Lorimer with a sigh.