In the darkness he heard chiming voices,
wheedling and tantalizing. One night he was walking on his little
verandah. Between rafts of silver-edged clouds were channels of
ocean-blue sky, inconceivably deep and transparent. The air was
serene, with a faint acid taste. Suddenly there shrilled a soft,
sweet, melancholy whistle, earnestly repeated. It seemed to come
from the little pond in the near-by copses. It struck him
strangely. It might be anything, he thought. He ran furiously
through the field, and to the brim of the pond. He could find
nothing, all was silent. Then the whistlings broke out again, all
round him, maddeningly. This kept on, night after night. The
parson, whom he consulted, said it was only frogs; but Gissing
told the constable he thought God had something to do with it.
Then willow trees and poplars showed a pallid bronze sheen,
forsythias were as yellow as scrambled eggs, maples grew knobby
with red buds. Among the fresh bright grass came, here and there,
exhilarating smells of last year's buried bones.
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