His head lifted quickly, yet he did not look in the direction of the sound, which came from the woods behind the house.

He did not stir, and his eyes half-closed, as though he hesitated what to do.

The call was not that of a bird familiar to the Western world.

It had a melancholy softness like that of the bell-bird of the Australian bush.

Yet, in the insistence of the note, it was, too, a challenge or a summons.
Three times during the past week he had heard it--once as he went by the market-place of Manitou; once as he returned in the dusk from Tekewani's Reservation, and once at dawn from the woods behind the house.