ou Miss Percival in heaven?"--and he began to
sing, deep, stirring songs of rhythmic melody, that catch up individual
existences and bear them to congregated continents, where mountains sing
and seas respond, amid the _encore_ of starry spheres.

O Music! if we could but divine thee, dear divinity, thou mightst be
less divine! then let us be content to be divinized in thee!--and I was.
I let him sing, knowing that it was in delirium; and for the moment my
wonder ceased concerning Miss Axtell's love for Herbert.

This while, Jeffy stood speechless, transfused into melody. Whence came
this love of Africans for harmonious measure? Oh, I remember: the scroll
of song whereon were written the accents of the joyed morning-stars,
when they grew jubilant that earth stood create, was let fall by an
angel upon Afric's soil. No one of the children of the land was found of
wisdom sufficient to read the hieroglyphs; therefore the sacred roll was
divided among the souls in the nation: unto each was given one note from
the divine whole.

"Jeffy must have received a semi-breve as his portion," I thought, for
he was rapt in ecstasy.

"Oh, sing again!" he said, unconsciously, when, exhausted, the invalid
reached the shore of Silence,--where he did not long linger, for he
changed his song to lament that he could not reach his ship, that would
sail before he could recover; and he made an effort to rise. He fell
back, fainting.

It seemed a great blessing that at this moment the housekeeper
introduced the person Doctor Percival had sent.

That night, and for many after, it seemed, my father looked extremely
anxious. I did not see the patient again until the eventful twenty-fifth
of March was past.

Two days only was I permitted for my visit. Would Miss Axtell expect me?
or had she, it might be, forgotten that she had asked my presence?

My father had not forgotten the obligation of the ring of gold; he made
allusion to it in the moment of parting, and I felt it tightening about
me more and more as the miles of sea and land rolled back over our
separation; and a question, asked long ago and unanswered yet, was
repeated in my mental realm,--"Canst thou bind the sweet influences of
the Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?" and I said, "I will not
try."

It was evening when I arrived at the parsonage. Sophie was full of sweet
sisterly joy on seeing me, and of surprise when I told her what had
occurred in our father's house. It was s