When the music stopped the woman on the porch stirred and sighed. Then she lowered her eyes and her gaze fell upon Ellen. She rose and came to the edge of the porch. "Good-morning, child," she said. "Did you want to see me?"
"Yes," said Ellen. "I wanted to know whether you didn't want a goat."
"Why, no," answered the woman with some surprise, "I don't. We have all the animals about the place that we want."
"I wish you _would_ take this one," urged Ellen. "I don't know what to do with it."
"How do you come to be leading it about the country? Is it your goat?"
"Not exactly." She began to tell the woman all her story of how she had followed the little pig to the village; of how she had found the animals were being worried by the goat, and of how she had made it come away with her. It all sounded so strange, Ellen was half afraid the woman would not believe it. She did not seem to think it surprising, however; but when Ellen had ended she shook her head. "No," she said; "we wouldn't want such a mischievous animal about, I'm sure; but I'll ask my son." Then she called, "Jack, Jack!"
In answer a tall, stout lad came to the door. "What is it, mother?" he asked.
"Here's a child who has a goat, and she says this, that, and the other" (and the woman repeated Ellen's story). "Now the end of the matter is, she wants to leave the goat here with us."
"I don't see how we can--" began the lad slowly, when suddenly he stopped and listened intently with a strange, scared look on his face.
His mother caught him by the arm. "What is it, Jack?" she cried. "What are you listening to? It isn't--"
And now all listened, and Ellen knew that a sound she had heard some minutes before, without particularly noticing it, was the voice of some one weeping and complaining. The voice was very faint and far off, but in the silence the little girl could make out the words, "I can't get down! I can't get down! Woe is me, but it's lonely up here." Ellen could not tell where the voice came from, but it seemed to come from the sky. There was silence for a moment and then it began again lamenting and weeping.
The woman threw her silk apron over her head and began to rock herself and sob. "Oh, the poor thing! I can't stand it, Jack," she cried. "You've got to get her down somehow. You've _got_ to."