The sound was of a murmurous character, soft, attractive, persuasive, friendly.

The sculptor fancied that such might have been the original voice and utterance of the natural man, before the sophistication of the human intellect formed what we now call language.
In this broad dialect--broad as the sympathies of nature--the human brother might have spoken to his inarticulate brotherhood that prowl the woods, or soar upon the wing, and have been intelligible to such extent as to win their confidence.
The sound had its pathos too.

At some of its simple cadences, the tears came quietly into Kenyon's eyes.

They welled up slowly from his heart, which was thrilling with an emotion more delightful than he had often felt before, but which he forbore to analyze, lest, if he seized it, it should at once perish in his grasp.
Donatello paused two or three times, and seemed to listen,--then, recommencing, he poured his spirit and life more earnestly into the strain.

And finally,--or else the sculptor's hope and imagination deceived him,--soft treads were audible upon the fallen leaves.