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Maria looked absently at the smooth expanse of hair which showed below the hat of the girl who was playing. The air was played very slowly, otherwise the little audience might have danced a jig to it. Maria thought of the meetings which she used to attend in Edgham, and how she used to listen to the plaint of the whippoorwill on the river-bank while the little organ gave out its rich, husky drone.
She dragged the washing-bench into the back kitchen from its corner in the shed, and on it placed her tubs; and when the water was heated, she put the garments into a tub, and rubbed with the vigor and ease of a woman well accustomed to such work. All the sounds of the night were loud about her, and the song of the whippoorwill came in at the open door. He was very near.
If you had wanted me you'd have said so." Impulsively she laid a trembling hand on his arm and spoke in rushing syllables. "I thought you'd come without being sent for then when I knew you wouldn't, I couldn't hear it. I wrote you a note to-night.... I was going to send it to-morrow.... I'm going home the next day." A whippoorwill called plaintively from the hillside.
He was going to take her down south with him; he wanted her to see that little brown house in South Carolina, to know the tide-water gurgling in the Riverton coves, and mocking-birds singing to the moonlit night, and the voice of the whippoorwill out of the thickets. She must know the marshes, and the live-oaks hung with moss.
Mount, can you find your way to that sulphur spring where the flat stones are piled in little heaps?" The big fellow laughed. As he strode forward into the depthless sea of darkness a whippoorwill called. "That's Elerson, sir," he said, and repeated the call twice. The rifleman appeared from the darkness, touching his cap to me. "The horses are safe, sir," he said.
At sunset that evening Oo-koo-hoo and his wife sat smoking beside their fire; and when the hermit thrush was singing, the whippoorwill whippoorwilling, the owl oo-koo-hooing, the fox barking, the bull frog whoo-wonking, the gander honking, the otter whistling, the drake quacking, the squirrel chattering, the cock grouse drumming, and the wolf howling each to his own chosen mate, the hunter turned to me and smiled: "Do you hear Shing-wauk singing?"
A thoroughly happy song, overflowing with life, it gives even its most familiar phrases an air of gracious condescension, as when some great violinist stoops to the "Carnival of Venice." The Red Thrush does not, however, consent to any parrot-like mimicry, though every note of wood or field Oriole, Bobolink, Crow, Jay, Robin, Whippoorwill appears to pass in veiled procession through the song.
In this same philosophy we learn that in that ancient time a council of the gods was held to consider the propriety of making a moon, and at last the task was given to Whippoorwill, a god of the night, and a frog yielded himself a willing sacrifice for this purpose, and the Whippoorwill, by incantations, and other magical means, transformed the frog into the new moon.
And the anti-slavery members of the Legislature are hereby requested to seek legislative enactments whereby the whippoorwill may be further domiciliated at the North, and be provided with protection during the winter season.
Miss Ruth, I'm going to ask you to stand guard for us, and if danger approaches, give us some sort of a signal. I suppose you can imitate a whippoorwill?" asked Garry. "Indeed I can," and in a soft tone she proved it to the satisfaction of both Dick and Garry. "There, then that much is accomplished. Believe me, I'll be overjoyed if I hear Phil's voice in answer to my hail," said Garry.
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