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Stuart cantered on: we turned into the Brock road, and I found myself retracing my steps toward the Rapidan. As I passed near the lonely house, I cast a glance toward the glimmering light. Had Nighthawk's friend arrived? We soon reached Ely's Ford, and I conducted Stuart to Mordaunt's bivouac, which I had left at dusk.
Nighthawk's head rose, and he gazed at them with flashing eyes then he looked at Mohun and groaned. Summoning his last remains of strength, he drew from his breast a pencil and a piece of paper, wrote some words upon the paper, and affixed it to Mohun's breast. This seemed to exhaust him.
He had thought it was thunder that he had just heard. But it was Mr. Nighthawk, making that odd, booming sound of his. It was ever so much louder than Chirpy had supposed it could be. He had never heard it so near before. For a moment Chirpy thought that perhaps Kiddie Katydid didn't know what he was talking about. But no! There was Mr. Nighthawk's well-known call, Peent! Peent!
Like many another city dweller they may take habit for preference, but the longing for the freedom of the woods, though unconscious, will voice itself some way. The nighthawk's cry, falling from the high gold of the waning sunset to dusky pasture glades, has no note of melancholy but a soothing sleepiness about it that makes it a lullaby of contentment. I rarely hear him after dark.
When we reached the summit of the grassy hillock, which sloped from the road that led to the seaport, Margrave, after pausing to recover breath, lifted up his voice, in a key, not loud, but shrill and slow and prolonged, half cry and half chant, like the nighthawk's.
At the same instant a light step the step of madam was heard crossing the floor of the apartment, above our heads; and this evidently banished Nighthawk's last fears. "He returned quickly to the seat where I was sitting; looked at me for some minutes with eyes full of fear, affection, sympathy, fright, and said in a voice so low, that it scarce rose above a whisper:
He spent much of his time listening for Mr. Nighthawk's Peent! Peent! which now and then came faintly across the meadow, and the dull, muffled boom that often followed. While Chirpy waited for the moon to grow full, one night an odd thing happened. The stars twinkled overhead. There wasn't a cloud in the sky.
"There!" he said, when he had settled himself in the tree once more. "If you think you can teach me to perform better, just try that trick yourself!" But Chirpy Cricket said that he was sure Mr. Nighthawk's performance couldn't be bettered by anybody. And he remarked that the noise reminded him of a high wind coming on top of a thunder storm. That pleased Mr. Nighthawk.
When we reached the summit of the grassy hillock, which sloped from the road that led to the seaport, Margrave, after pausing to recover breath, lifted up his voice, in a key, not loud, but shrill and slow and prolonged, half cry and half chant, like the nighthawk's.
I obeyed mechanically, stifling all surprise. I had made my resolve, and admitted no thought that could shake it. When we reached the summit of the grassy hillock, which sloped from the road that led to the seaport, Margrave, after pausing to recover breath, lifted up his voice, in a key, not loud, but shrill and slow and prolonged, half cry and half chant, like the nighthawk's.
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