Then a low, tuneless crooning: "Wen yo' see a pig a-goin' along Widder straw in de sider 'is mouf, It'll be er tuhble wintuh,

He seized the prickly branches coiling about and above him; he gasped in prayerful pleading, the home teaching still strong in him; but there was no answer, save the crooning night-birds and the croaking frogs.

Even the birds have stopped crooning to catch your delicate brogue!"

It was the Pedlar, who had wrapped himself in his gaunt arms and was crooning softly, with unspeakable joy: "Hark to him sing!

It was long after midnight now, and if one listened carefully he could catch the customary noises of the woods at such a time, from the soft crooning of the breeze as it sighed through the pine tops, to the occasional note of some night-bird calling to its mate, or the plaintive voice of a hungry young coon waiting impatiently the return of its foraging mother.

Bigbeam rowed steadily toward home, crooning some barbarous old half-song of her race.

Her distaff was apparently very old and dirty, and as she span she seemed to be crooning some ancient ditty to herself, thinking, maybe, of her children and grandchildren, or even of the days when she was herself a child.

He rose and started on his downward way, but the woods seemed strangely transformed since yesterday; just before sunset he came to the prairie where his lodge used to be; he saw an old squaw near the door crooning a song; she was decked with many strings of hiaqua and costly beads.

It is these hard-bitten men singing courage to you from their tent; it is the waves of their island home crooning of their deeds to you who are to follow them.

Polly had her arms around her friend's neck, crooning love words.

Soft, soft as the crooning of a mother bird, came the first notes.

Its insect kind was the most dangerous enemy man had: the only form of life he had not conquered, and would be crooning cradle-songs when humanity, perhaps through its agency, or perhaps through the sun growing cold, had passed from the earth.

Unexplainedly she found herself growing moody and dreamy; at times she had a curious feeling of having just experienced something, but what it was she could not remember; her mind went groping in its subconscious self for something which constantly eluded it, her heart "Went crooning a low song it could not learn, But wandered over it, as one who gropes For a forgotten chord upon a lyre.

As the shadows fell one saw the man walking up and down the ward with the child in his arms, crooning the "Marseillaise" until the tired little eyes closed.

You have often seen them walking with dainty steps to pick up their food, and have heard the soft crooning 'coo-oo' they give when talking to each other.

Many a time, especially this last year, when I have seen the mother in you crooning to some neighbour's child, I have thought to myself, 'I don't know my Grizel yet; I have seen her in the bud only,' and I would fain" He broke off.

* "Through the sadness of all things I hear the crooning of the Eternal Mother.

It is quite an advantage to any place, from an invalid standpoint, that the surrounding country affords them abundant means whereby the mind may be occupied and kept from crooning over the memories of loved ones far away, or brooding upon their own misfortunes.

Through the whole land between the four seas benediction is everywhere; blue-bells and the rosy fingers of heath deck the mountain-tops, where the grouse are crooning to each other among the whins; down the hillsides into every valley pour gladness and greenness and song; there are flowers everywhere, even to the very verge of the whispering sea.

Zorka was singing a sad Bosnian song in her tender, crooning voice, and dancing with graceful steps round the little bear, who, to tell the truth, also danced more lightly than the heavy Ibrahim, and was very amusing when he lifted his paw to his head as Hungarians do when they are in high spirits and break forth in hurrahs.

With that, Billy relapsed into crooning his ditty.

The young girl, of whom I have spoken as having attached herself to me during the last moments of my stay on shipboard, and an old negro woman, whose crooning hymns made a strange accompaniment to the dashing waters, and whose stolid tranquillity seemed to reproach my anguish, were our only companions on the sort of dais assigned to his female passengers by Christian Garth.

Even the crooning hymns of the old negro woman had died away; and the moans of the suffering child, and the sobs of the weary mother, and the eager exclamations of Ada Greene (for such I learned was the name of my young companion), were, for a season, lost alike in sleep.

Still the old negro's crooning hymns went on, recommenced with morning light.

Disgusted with her selfishness, I vouchsafed her no further notice at the time, and her crooning went on during the whole period of the bitter death-struggle of that poor sufferer, whose name I never knew, but whose little, deformed waif, the orphan of the raft, remained my heritage.