BIRDS IN A VILLAGE. 
81 
all events singularly wanting in the finer human 
qualities. 
Looking out from the open window across the 
low hedge-top, I could see her as she alternately 
rose and fell with slow indolent motion, now waist- 
high above the green dividing wall, then only her 
brown head visible resting against the rope just 
where her hand had grasped it. And as she 
swayed herself to and fro she sang that simple 
melody — probably some child's hymn which she 
had been taught at the Sunday school ; but it was 
a very long hymn, or else she repeated the same 
few stanzas many times, and after each there was 
a brief pause, and then the voice that seemed to 
fall and rise with the motion went on as before. 
I could have stood there for an hour — nay, for 
hours — listening to it, so fresh and so pure was the 
clear young voice, which had no earthly trouble in 
it, and no passion, and was in this like the melody 
of the birds of which I had lately heard so much ; 
and with it all that tenderness and depth which is 
not theirs, but is human only and of the soul. 
It struck me as a singular coincidence — and to 
a mind of so primitive a type as the writer's there 
is more in the fact than the word implies — that, 
just as I had quitted London, to seek for just such 
a spot as I so speedily found, with the passionately 
G 
