It was an old litany, and Lottie thought as she listened that she could hear an unseen choir in the far distance, high among the grey pinnacles, on the edge of the clouds, intoning in intricate delicate circles of harmony the responses. Was it the old monks? Was it the angels? Who could tell? “Lottie, my love, that is the _vox humana_ stop,” said the kind old Captain, who knew something about it; and as he, too, was no wiser than other people, he began to whisper an explanation to her of how it was. But Lottie cared nothing about stops. She could hear the solemn singers of the past quiring far off at some unseen altar, the softened distant sweetness of the reply. Her heart rose up into the great floating circling atmosphere of song. She seemed to get breath again, to get rest to her soul: a strange impulse came over her. She, who was so shy, so uncertain of her power, so bitterly unwilling to adopt the trade that was being forced upon her: it was all that she could do to keep herself from singing, joining to those mystical spiritual voices her own that was full of life and youth. Her breast swelled, her lips came apart, her voice all but escaped from her, soaring into that celestial distance. All at once the strain stopped, and she with it, coming down to the Abbey nave again, where she stood in the midst of the dim reflected rubies and amethysts and silvery whites of a great painted window, giddy and leaning upon the old Chevalier. “It was the _vox humana_. It is too theatrical for my taste, my dear. It was invented by----” “Oh, hush, hush!” cried Lottie, under her breath; “he is beginning again.” This time it was the “Pastoral Symphony” the Signor played--music that was never intended for the chill of winter, but for the gleaming stars, the soft falling dews, the ineffable paleness and tenderness of spring. It came upon Lottie like those same dews from heaven. She grasped the old man’s arm, but she could not keep herself from the response which no longer seemed to come back from any unseen and mystic shrine. Why should the old monks come back to sing, or the angels have the trouble, who have so much else to do, when Lottie was there? When the “Pastoral Symphony” was over the Signor went on, and she with him. Surely there must have been some secret understanding that no one knew of--not themselves. He played on unconscious, and she lifted up her head to the moonlight and her voice to heaven and sang-- There were shepherds watching their flocks by night.