The Yankee Champion — page 51: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

44 THE YANKEE CHAMPION. like a soft flute, but as he came nearer he became convinced that it was a human voice. For afew mo- ments he stopped to listen. It was a low, plaintive tune, poured out in soft, liquid notes, but the words were undistinguishable. | After standing for a minute or two to hearken, - Walter Nixon moved carefully forward. The open- ing he had discovered was a moss-covered spot where a huge rock of granite, ledge-like and shelv- ing, arose from the earth. Upon a mossy bank, where the warm rays of the sun shone in, sat the songstress. She was weaving a wreath of ever- green, the vines of which crept along at her feet, and as she plied h r fingers she continued to sing. - She did not notice the approach of the intruder, and consequently he had a good opportunity to watch her movements. Walter thought he had never seen a female so beautiful, and he stood and gazed like one entranced. She might have seen the suns of seventeen summers, but they had left her with a light, delicate frame, graceful and airy in its proportions, and beautiful in its moldings. Her features were as soft and musi- cal in their harmony as were the notes she was utter- ing, and their pencilings were as fine and graceful as the pure white rose. Her hair, which was of sunny hue, though not curling into ringlets, was floating over her snow-white shoulders in wavy tresses like the sinuosities of a babbling brooklet. One little foot peeped out beneath her dress, and Walter could see that the shoe which covered it was well-worn and unfit for that cool season of the year. As she sat thus there was an undefinable air of placid sadness per- vading her whole form. It was not sorrow, nor was it exactly melancholy, but it seemed a sort of calm, comicbooks.c