'There are more
things in heaven and earth, Horatio--'."
"Faith, and so there are," broke in Nat Fiennes, catching me on a
sudden by the arm. "Listen!"
High on the forest ridge, far and faint, yet clear over the
pine-tops, a voice was singing.
The voice was a girl's--a girl's, or else some spirit's; for it fell
to us out of the very dawn, pausing and anon dropping again in little
cadences, as though upon the waft of wing; and wafted with it, wave
upon wave, came also the morning scent of the _macchia_.
We could distinguish no words, intently though we listened, or no
more than one, which sounded like _Mortu, mortu, mortu_, many times
repeated in slow refrain before the voice lifted again to the air.
But the air itself was voluble between its cadences, and the voice,
though a woman's, seemed to challenge us on a high martial note, half
menacing, half triumphant.
Nat Fiennes had sprung to his feet, musket in hand, when another and
less romantic sound broke the silence of the near woods; and down
through a glade on the slope above us, where darkness and day yet
mingled in a bluish twilight under the close boughs, came scampering
back the hogs described to us by Mr.
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