e the instrument. It only required a few seconds for a hush
to come over the room.

"That old coon is going to give the thing a rattle."

The sight of a man at the piano was something so unusual that even the
faro-dealer, who was about to take in a fifty-dollar bet on the tray,
paused and did not reach for the money. Men stopped drinking, with the
glasses at their lips. Conversation appeared to have been struck with a
sort of paralysis, and cards were no longer shuffled.

The old man brushed back his long white locks, looked up to the ceiling,
half closed his eyes, and in a mystic sort of reverie passed his fingers
over the keys. He touched but a single note, yet the sound thrilled the
room. It was the key to his improvisation, and as he wove his cords
together the music laid its spell upon every ear and heart. He felt his
way along the keys like a man treading uncertain paths, but he gained
confidence as he progressed, and presently bent to his work like a master.
The instrument was not in exact tune, but the ears of his audience did not
detect anything radically wrong. They heard a succession of grand chords,
a suggestion of paradise, melodies here and there, and it was enough.

"See him counter with his left!" said an old rough, enraptured.

"He calls the turn every time on the upper end of the board," responded a
man with a stack of chips in his hand.

The player wandered off into the old ballads they had heard at home. All
the sad and melancholy and touching songs, that came up like dreams of
childhood, this unknown player drew from the keys. His hands kneaded their
hearts like dough and squeezed out tears as from a wet sponge.

As the strains flowed one upon the other, the listeners saw their homes of
the long ago reared again; they were playing once more where the
apple-blossoms sank through the soft air to join the violets on the green
turf of the old New England States; they saw the glories of the Wisconsin
maples and the haze of the Indian summer blending their hues together;
they recalled the heather of Scottish hills, the white cliffs of Britain,
and heard the sullen roar of the sea, as it beat upon their memories,
vaguely. Then came all the old Christmas carols, such as they had sung in
church thirty years before; the subtle music that brings up the glimmer of
wax tapers, the solemn shrines, the evergreen, holly, mistletoe, and
surpliced choirs. Then the remorseless performer planted his final stab in