Judith Moore; or, Fashioning a Pipe
done, and he was just about leaving, when, sweet, clear, full, the voice of yesterday shook out a few high notes, and then taking up the words of a song began to sing it in such fashion that Andrew (who knew the song well) could hardly believe that the sound issued from mortal lips—it was so flute-like, so liquid. 

 Now, Andrew's life had not been one of much dissipation; still, there were hours in it he did not care to dwell upon, and the memory of every one of these unworthy hours suddenly smote him with shame. They say that at death's approach one sees in a second all the sins of his soul stand forth in crimson blazonry, and perhaps, in that moment, Andrew's old self died. 

 The singer's voice had taken up another song, one he did not know— 

   "Out from yourself! For your broken heart's vest; For the peace which you crave; For the end of your quest; For the love which can save; Come! Come to me!" 

 In springing over the fence and making towards where the sound came from, Andrew hardly seemed as if acting upon his own volition. He had been summoned: he went. 

 After all, there is not much mystery about a girl singing among the trees, yet Andrew's heart throbbed with something of that hushed tumult with which we approach some sacred shrine of feeling, or enter upon some new intense delight. 

 He soon saw her, standing with her back against a rough shell-bark hickory. The cloudy greyness of its rugged stem seemed to intensify the pallor and accentuate the delicacy of her face. For she was a very pale-faced, fragile-looking woman who stood there singing: her eyes were wide and wistful, but not unhappy-looking, only pitiable from the intense eagerness that seemed to have consumed her. And, in fact, she was like an overtuned instrument whose tense strings quiver continually. 

 She was clad in a dull red gown made in one of the quaint fashions which la mode has revived of late years. It had many bizarre broideries of blues and black, touched here and there with gold—Russian embroidery, its wearer would have called it. As she sang she made little dramatic gestures with slender hands, and at the last words of her song's refrain, she stretched forth her arms with a gesture expressing the infinitude of yearning. 

 Her face, so mobile as to be in itself speech, seconded her words by an inarticulate but powerful plea. It was as though she pleaded with Fate to 
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