Now into great mournful hollows the voice sank steadfastly.

One soft sweep of the strings succeeded a deep final note, and the hearers breathed freely.
"Stradella!" said the Greek, folding his arms.
The ladies were too deeply impressed to pursue their play with him.

Real emotions at once set aside the semi-credence they had given to their own 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.