festival bug?

[Amadeus W.M.]

echo "hello" | text2wave | aplay      # works
Playing WAVE 'stdin' : Signed 16 bit Little Endian, Rate 16000 Hz, Mono


echo "there" | text2wave | aplay      # noise 
Playing raw data 'stdin' : Unsigned 8 bit, Rate 8000 Hz, Mono


What gives? Anybody else seeing this? text2wave comes with festival.

For fun: "the", "ther", "there it is", "there you go", etc. work, but 
"there", "therefore", possibly others don't.

Bug, or what?