"We went up a gentle hill which was planted with chestnut-trees; from the top of which we saw down into a green valley, in the middle of which, surrounded by a clump of chestnuts, lay a little cottage. Presently a burst of merry barking greeted us, and a bright beautiful little dog came bounding and jumping up against the old woman, and frisking round us with every sign of the greatest satisfaction. Then he turned to me, and, after looking me all over, seemed tolerably satisfied, and ran back again to his mistress. As we descended the hill, I heard a strange kind of song, which seemed to come from the cottage, and to be sung by a bird:
'In my forest-bower I sing all day, Hour after hour, To eternity. Oh, happy am I In my forest-bower!'
These few words were repeated over and over again: the nearest description I can give of the sound is, that it was like the effect of a bugle and a cornet answering each other at a great distance over water.
"My curiosity was at the greatest possible stretch of excitement; and without waiting for the old woman's permission, I ran into the cottage. The twilight was beginning to fall; and, by the sinking light, I found a neat, well-arranged little room, a few cups and glasses on a sideboard, and some singular-looking boxes on a table. In a very beautiful cage in the window hung a bird; and it was indeed from it that the song came which I had heard. The old woman was coughing and panting, hardly able to recover her breath. She took scarcely any notice of me--did not even seem to know I was present--but patted her little dog, and then turned and talked to the bird, which only answered with singing the same song. All this time I stood watching her movements; and it almost frightened me to see how eternally her face kept working and twitching; her head, too, shook as if age had loosened its hold on her shoulders; and altogether she looked so odd and strange, that, do what I would, I could not make out what her features were like.
"When she had got her breath again, she lit a candle, threw a cloth over a little table, and put out some supper. At last she turned round to me, and told me to take one of the twisted-cane chairs, and sit down. I did so, and seated myself exactly opposite to her, with the light between us. Then she folded her lanky withered fingers together, and said a long prayer, making all the time such strange contortions with her face, that again it was all I could do to help bursting out laughing. But I was afraid of making her angry, and checked myself. After supper, she said another long grace, and then shewed me a bed in a little narrow chamber adjoining, she herself sleeping in the room in which we supped. I was tired and half stupified, and so soon fell asleep. I awoke several times, however, in the night, and heard the old woman coughing and talking to her dog, and the bird now and then--which seemed to be in a dream--bringing out single words and lines of its song. The chestnuts rustled outside the window; far away a nightingale was singing; and all these sounds together made so odd a mixture, that I could hardly persuade myself I was awake, and that I had not fallen into another still stranger dream.