It is quite true, that, the next morning after James’s departure, she rose as usual in the dim gray, and was to be seen opening the kitchen-door just at the moment when the birds were giving the first little drowsy stir and chirp,—­and that she went on setting the breakfast-table for the two hired men, who were bound to the fields with the oxen,—­and that then she went on skimming cream for the butter, and getting ready to churn, and making up biscuit for the Doctor’s breakfast, when he and they should sit down together at a somewhat later hour; and as she moved about, doing all these things, she sung various scraps of old psalm-tunes; and the good Doctor, who was then busy with his early exercises of devotion, listened, as he heard the voice, now here, now there, and thought about angels and the Millennium.  Solemnly and tenderly there floated in at his open study-window, through the breezy lilacs, mixed with low of kine and bleat of sheep and hum of early wakening life, the little silvery ripples of that singing, somewhat mournful in its cadence, as if a gentle soul were striving to hush itself to rest.  The words were those of the rough old version of the Psalms then in use:—­

    “Truly my waiting soul relies
      In silence God upon;
    Because from him there doth arise
      All my salvation.”

And then came the busy patter of the little footsteps without, the moving of chairs, the clink of plates, as busy hands were arranging the table; and then again there was a pause, and he thought she seemed to come near to the open window of the adjoining room, for the voice floated in clearer and sadder:—­

    “O God, to me be merciful,
      Be merciful to me! 
    Because my soul for shelter safe
      Betakes itself to thee.

    “Yea, in the shadow of thy wings
      My refuge have I placed,
    Until these sore calamities
      Shall quite be overpast.”

The tone of life in New England, so habitually earnest and solemn, breathed itself in the grave and plaintive melodies of the tunes then sung in the churches; and so these words, though in the saddest minor key, did not suggest to the listening ear of the auditor anything more than that pensive religious calm in which he delighted to repose.  A contrast indeed they were, in their melancholy earnestness, to the exuberant carollings of a robin, who, apparently attracted by them, perched himself hard by in the lilacs, and struck up such a merry roulade as quite diverted the attention of the fair singer;—­in fact, the intoxication breathed in the strain of this little messenger, whom God had feathered and winged and filled to the throat with ignorant joy, came in singular contrast with the sadder notes breathed by that creature of so much higher mould and fairer clay,—­that creature born for an immortal life.

But the good Doctor was inly pleased when she sung,—­and when she stopped, looked up from his Bible wistfully, as missing something, he knew not what; for he scarce thought how pleasant the little voice was, or knew he had been listening to it,—­and yet he was in a manner enchanted by it, so thankful and happy that he exclaimed with fervor, “The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage.”