United States or Costa Rica ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Elevated spots often showed the ruins of the old stone towers, once a part of some feudal stronghold, but the eye sought in vain for well-wooded slopes or thrifty groves; and yet, strange to say, the song-birds which we had missed further south, in Andalusia and at Granada, put in an appearance as we came north, cheering us with their soft trilling notes in the amber sunshine that radiated about the small railroad stations.

Suddenly, it flashed upon him like a revelation, "Fortune," that might be the word! Such exultant joy, such lark-like trilling, such inspiring promises of happiness had never echoed in any word, as they now did from the "fortune," the young lansquenet so gaily and exultantly uttered.

Within the radius of his sight a half dozen more were trilling and quavering, and he knew that others were pouring out their souls farther on, as the low hum of their many voices came to his ears. Now and then he saw a flash of blue or brown or gray, as some restless feathered being shot from one bough to another.

Just what were the words that hummed across the wire into the pink little ear of the bride-to-be, Billy never knew; but a Marie that was anything but wistful-eyed and dejected left the telephone a little later, and was heard very soon in the room above trilling merry snatches of a little song. Contentedly, then, Billy went back to her roses. It was a pretty wedding, a very pretty wedding.

When they had threaded their way among leaning charred poles and came to green stuff underfoot and merely toasted foliage all around, Cochrane heard a sweet, high-pitched trilling which came from a half-inch hole in the ground. But he was not astonished by the place from which the trilling came. He was astonished at the sound itself. There was a cry behind them. "Mr. Cochrane! Doctor Holden!"

With the trilling of the grasshoppers alone disturbing the serene quiet of this autumn afternoon, all nature seemed in harmony with the declining season. He stood a while, his thoughts becoming the calmer for the silence and loneliness of this breathing meadow.

Smallest and bravest of the first Yankee East Indiamen, this taut sloop, with the boatswain's pipe trilling cheerily and all hands ready with cutlases and pikes to repel boarders, was by no means the least important vessel that ever passed in by Sandy Hook.

The words sounded like a rally call. With that the girl fled down the hall, trilling the merriest sort of a Christmas tune. At three o'clock St. Angé turned out in force, and set its face toward the bungalow.

Another, to the head of Yosemite Fall by Indian Canyon; thence up the Yosemite Creek, tracing it all the way to its highest sources back of Mount Hoffman, then a wide sweep around the head of its dome-paved basin, passing its many little lakes and bogs, gardens and groves, trilling, warbling rills, and back by the Fall Canyon.

At this ringing command, every bird, as far as the river carried his voice, came to investigate and remained to admire. Over and over he rang every change he could invent. He made a gallant effort at warbling and trilling, and then, with the gladdest heart he ever had known, he burst into ringing song: "Good Cheer! Good Cheer! Good Cheer!"