The Major presently grunted over his pipe some expression of surprise; but Frank could say nothing. He was almost holding his breath, so great was his pleasure. The air, almost regretfully, ran downhill like a brook approaching, an inevitable full close; and then, as the last note was reached, a chord of voices broke in with some kind of chorus. The voices were of a quartette of men, and rang together like struck notes, not loud or harsh, but, on the contrary, with a restrained softness that must, I suppose, have been the result of very careful training. It was the same air that they were repeating, but the grace-notes were absent, and the four voices, in chord after chord, supplied their place by harmony. It was impossible to tell what was the subject of the song or even whether it were sacred or secular, for it was of that period--at least, so I conjecture--when the two worlds were one, and when men courted their love and adored their God after the same fashion. Only there ran through all that air of sweet and austere melancholy, as if earthly music could do no more than hint at what the heart wished to express. * * * * * Frank listened in a sort of ecstasy. The music was nearer now, coming from the direction from which the three travelers had themselves come this afternoon. Presently, from the apparent diminuendo, it was plain that the singers were past, and were going on towards the town. There was no sound of footsteps; the Major remarked on that, when he could get Frank to attend a few minutes later, when all was over; but there were field paths running in every direction, as well as broad stretches of grass beside the road, so the singers may very well have been walking on soft ground. (These points are dispassionately noted down in the diary.) The chorus was growing fainter now; once more the last slopes of the melody were in sight--those downhill gradations of the air that told of the silence to come. Then once more, for an instant, there was silence, till again, perhaps nearly a quarter of a mile away, the single tenor voice began _da capo_. And the last that Frank heard, at the moment before the quarter struck and, soft and mellow though it was, jarred the air and left the ear unable to focus itself again on the tiny woven thread of sound, was, once more the untiring quartette taking up the melody, far off in the silent darkness.