Page:The House Without Windows.djvu/137

 there. Mary." Mary looked, and then she said: "Ay, God hath taken this child into his careignorance demands mercy."

A moment of intense thought. She gazed and gazed, bewitched. Then she gave, or tried to give, a little laugh. It did not sound. "Oh," she tried to say, "how queer I feel! I believe I never felt so queer." And indeed she did feel queer. For she felt the feeling of speaking to her heart. She was talking, it seemed to her, loudly, but when, even in the midst of her talk, she listened, nothing sounded.

After a few seconds, it seemed, she ran on, leaping through the wet. Raindrops gathered on the ferns and the flowers of her dress, outlining them with the pearly water. She looked like a rain-fairy. Hour after hour passed, and she went like the wind itself; yet she did not tire. At last she found herself near the foot of that wondrous mountain, shimmering with snow-fields, cold white against a deepening night sky.

That night a bird of modest wood-colour, with speckled breast, sang of moonlight; and, rippling faintly, softly, came echoes from his silver-tongued mate. They sang, and they answered, and the moon-frost-tipped pines were quiet, and clouds floated near, snowy palaces of silence. Spellbound, Eepersip was borne away to fairy kingdoms where