c_!

It was nearing the end of the programme, and Ventnor had stepped forth
to play his last number. It was a wild, eerie Hungarian air, that wailed
and whispered like a lost child, then mounted up, up, louder, louder, a
perfect hurricane of melody, when--suddenly a sharp crack like a pistol
shot cut the air. The music ceased--one of the violin strings had
snapped. At another time the great man would have finished the number on
the three remaining strings, but the heat, the lax practice of a holiday
season--something, or perhaps everything combined, for the instant
overcame him. He stood like an awkward child, gazing down at the
trailing, useless string.

Instantly, Archie's sensitive brain grasped the whole situation.
Ventnor's business manager was not with him; he had not brought a second
violin. Like a flash Archie whipped his own out of its case. He had just
come from his lesson; it was in perfect tune. Before the shy, frail boy
knew what he was actually doing he was beside the footlights, handing
his own violin up to the great master, whose wonderful eyes gazed down
into the small, pale face, and whose hand immediately reached out,
grasping the poor, cheap little fiddle that Archie had learned his
scales on. The audience broke into applause, but with a single glance
Ventnor stilled them, and dashed straight into the melody precisely
where he had left off.

Archie could hardly believe his ears. Was _that_ his old thirty-dollar
fiddle? That marvellous thing that murmured, and wept, and laughed under
the master hand! Oh! the voice of it! The voice of it!

They would not let Ventnor go when he smiled himself off the stage.
They called and shouted, "Encore!" "Encore!" until he returned to
respond--respond, not with his own priceless instrument, but with
Archie's, and with a grace and kindliness that only a great man
possesses. He played a good-night lullaby on the boy's cheap little
violin, and, moreover, played it as he never had before. Archie
remembered afterwards that he had presence of mind enough to get on his
feet when they all sang "God Save the King," but it really seemed a
dream that Ventnor was shaking hands with him and saying, "I t'ank you,
me; I t'ank you. You save me great awkwardness." And then, before he
knew it, he had promised to go to the hotel the next day and play for
Ventnor.

All the way home he was thinking, "Fancy it!--I, Archie Anderson, asked
to play before Ventnor!" Then came the fuss