Only the hawks wheeled, and the wild pigeons crooned; the squirrels frisked among the branches; and now and then a great deer would leap from its couch and hasten into the coverts.

And the soft wind crooned and whispered in the leavesleaves that parting, showed other shapes swung high in air, whose pallid faces looked down on them, awful-eyed, from the tender green, faces drawn and haggard, with teeth agleam or open mouths whence screams had come, but very silent now until the Day of Judgment.

" The mother crooned a[n] to her babe.

"Poverino!" said the gondolier softly, while Marina crooned over him an Ave Maria, and the gondola glided noiselessly to its cadence.

Aye, even to the memories which were the possession of that far future youth, who was indeed I, of his childhood's days, when his nurse of that Age swung him, and crooned impossible lullabies of this mythical sun which, according to those future fairy-tales, had once passed across the blackness that now lay above the Pyramid.

* 28 quoth crooned frisked beech'-wood twain se'rene frol'icked wan'dering LITTLE BELL.

"What good child is this," the angel said, "That, with happy heart, beside her bed Prays so lovingly?" Low and soft, oh! very low and soft, Crooned the blackbird in the orchard croft, "Bell, dear Bell!" crooned he.

"What good child is this," the angel said, "That, with happy heart, beside her bed Prays so lovingly?" Low and soft, oh! very low and soft, Crooned the blackbird in the orchard croft, "Bell, dear Bell!" crooned he.

Miss Hugonin crooned, in an ecstacy of tenderness and woe.

There, with the sunlit waters before them, and the rippling waves making music at their feet, the old nurse crooned out many an Indian legend or exciting story about the red men of the past.

An old Mohammedan crooned eerily, impressively, a lament which echoed round and round the vault.

I've crooned lullabies to Jacky without remembering that I once had volume enough to drown out an accompanist.

III THE EDITOR AT WORK To go back a little, for several days after his child's birth Major Carteret's chief interest in life had been confined to the four walls of the chamber where his pale wife lay upon her bed of pain, and those of the adjoining room where an old black woman crooned lovingly over a little white infant.

The feed-pump eccentric-shaft of this engine, which was very poor and flaky, suddenly gave out about five in the afternoon, and I had to stop in a hurry, and that sweet invisible mechanism which had crooned and crooned about my ears in the air, and followed me whithersoever

The feed-pump eccentric-shaft of this engine, which was very poor and flaky, suddenly gave out about five in the afternoon, and I had to stop in a hurry, and that sweet invisible mechanism which had crooned and crooned about my ears in the air, and followed me whithersoever

"My love, my love," she crooned in his ear, pressing her warm cheek close to his.

For their colour wavered and changed and faltered, shifting ever from hue to hue, turning golden and ruddy amber, and emerald-green and lotus-blue; and over her eyes her arching brows lifted and fell and played and flickered, fixing his troubled soul like nails, and rivetting his attention, till her singing voice sounded in his head like a distant tune crooned in the ear of a sleepy man.

She used to hold him entranced long winter-evenings, while she sat knitting in the chimney-corner, and crooned to him strange, wild African legends of the things that she had seen in her childhood and early days,for she had been stolen when about fifteen years of age; and these weird, dreamy talks increased the fervor of his roving imagination, and his desire to explore the wonders of the wide and unknown world.

As he returned through the night, walking, hopping, or running, as the need came to him, he crooned to himself a song he had once made up.

On each farm stood a village of wooden huts, where turbaned mammies crooned and piccaninnies gamboled in the sunshine.

The fire-flames crooned a tiny song, No cold wind moved the wintry tree; The children both in Faërie dreamed Beside their mother's knee.

Then I whispered the nurses to bring cotton and oakum, and little cushions; made them put the cotton and oakum, in small tufts, to my index fingers; and while I crooned my directions in a sing-song lullaby air, I worked in this support, gradually and imperceptibly withdrawing my hands, until I could substitute the little cushions for the force by which they held the muscle in proper position.

The story of Rama and Sita is the Odyssey of the East, crooned by grandmothers over the evening fires; sung by wandering minstrels under the shade of the mango grove; trolled by travelers jogging in bullock carts along empty moonlit roads.

Tears streamed down the woman's cheeks as she crooned and babbled to the child in a language only a tender mother knows, but in her eyes was the look of a soul crucified with helpless suffering.

The women voiced a collective sigh of admiration, and old Bask-Wah-Wan ruffled the gay material and patted it and crooned in childish joy.