He stepped out on the stair, shut his door, and listened.

It came again--a strange unearthly musical cry! If ever disembodied sound went wandering in the wind, just such a sound must it be! Knowing little of music save in the forms of tone and vowel-change and rhythm and rime, he felt as if he could have listened for ever to the wild wandering sweetness of its lamentation.

Almost immediately it ceased--then once more came again, apparently from far off, dying away on the distant tops of the billowy air, out of whose wandering bosom it had first issued.

It was as the wailing of a summer-wind caught and swept along in a tempest from the frozen north.
The moment he ceased to expect it any more, he began to think whether it must not have come from the house.

He stole down the stair--to do what, he did not know.