Then suddenly, as I watched, I saw in the distance a procession of swinging, twinkling lights moving along a footpath that cut through a wood and crossed a low spur of the hills.
For the moment I wondered what it was, but in an instant I knew; it was the party from Brownbrook on their homeward tramp, and their lanterns were lighting them down the rugged precipitous footpath that was lying in deep shadow.
When they reached the level road they started singing, their voices in beautiful harmony, rising up and echoing again and again against the steep hillsides.
Was I thinking of battlefields with a saddened heart again? No, the cloud had lifted from my soul; I could look for something better, something more world-wide in its effects than even this terrible war. And as I stood thinking all this, the words came up to me that they were singing, as they tramped along the silent moonlit road, at the foot of the forest-clad hills:
“Coming, coming, yes, they are, Coming, coming, from afar; All to meet in plains of glory, All to sing His praises sweet: What a chorus, what a meeting, With the family complete!”
HAVE you ever heard the Little People of the Streams singing in the night? I wonder!
Once you have heard their music you will never forget it!
The first time I heard it was one February—shortly after I had taken the cottage—the season above all others when the brooks and falls and mountain springs are over-full of water, that hurries along at a great pace, tumbling over rocks, dropping down into green wells and grottos below, always galloping down hill till finally it reaches the ever-rushing river in the valley.
By day, each brook seems merely to be chatting sociably to the banks and the long harts-tongue ferns as it passes down, and you only hear one at a time. But after dark, when most other sounds have ceased, the voices of the streams seem to grow marvellously in volume.
I was lying awake one night with the windows open, listening literally to the sound of many waters, and trying to disentangle them.
First I heard the spring outside my garden gate as it scrambled down from the hillside above, splashing the overhanging greenery with light spray, and finally pouring out of a little trough—dark brown wood, closely enamelled with green mosses—into a rocky pool, where it ceases its swirl for half a minute, just while it gets its breath, before rushing on down the hill, finding its own way around, or over, all sorts of obstacles, and resenting any interference of man.