r the town. It is quiet as the graveyard, save for the murmur of
the waters falling over the dam. And I cannot tell whether it is fancy
or whether it is real, but now and then there comes to me a faint hint
of music,--it sounds almost like Watts' accordion, but of course it
cannot be at this unholy hour, and the tune it makes me think of some
way is 'Silver Threads among the Gold.' Isn't it odd that I should
hear that song, and yet not hear it, and have it running through my
mind?"

And thus the town heard Watts McHurdie's song of triumph--the chortle
that every male creature of the human kind instinctively lets out when
he has found favour in some woman's eyes, that men have let out since
Lemech sang of victory over the young man to Adah and Zillah! And in
all the town no one knew what it meant. For the accordion is not
essentially an instrument of passion. So the episode ended, and
another day came in. And all that is left to mark for this world that
night of triumph--and that mark soon will bleach into oblivion--are
the verses entitled "Love at Sunset," of which Colonel Martin
Culpepper, the poet's biographer, writes in that chapter "At Hymen's
Altar," referred to before: "This poem was written October 14, 1874,
on the occasion of the poet's engagement to Miss Nellie Logan, who
afterward became his wife. By many competent critics, including no
less a personage than Hon. John Barclay, president of the National
Provisions Company, this poem is deemed one of Mr. McHurdie's noblest
achievements, ranking second only to the great song that gave him
national fame."

And it should be set down as an integral part of this narrative that
John Barclay first read the verses "Love at Sunset" in the _Banner_,
two weeks after the night of their composition, as he was finishing a
campaign for the Fifth Parallel bonds. He picked up the _Banner_ one
evening at twilight in a house in Pleasant township, and seeing Watts'
initials under some verses, read them at first mechanically, and then
reread them with real zest, and so deeply did they move the man from
the mooring of the campaign that seeing an accordion on the table of
the best room in which he was waiting for supper, Barclay picked it up
and fooled with it for half an hour. It had been a dozen years since
he had played an accordion, and the tunes that came into his fingers
were old tunes in vogue before the war, and he thought of himself as
an old man, though he was not yet twen