response to a call, Wind Driver and Wine Face entered.
Wine Face was certainly a beautiful girl; and Lazenby might well have
been pardoned for throwing in his fate with such a heathen, if he
despaired of ever seeing England again. The Tall Master did not turn
towards these. The Indians sat gracefully on a bearskin before the fire.
The eyes of the girl were cast shyly upon the Man as he stood there
unlike an ordinary man; in his face a fine hardness and the cold light
of the North. He suddenly tipped his bow upward and brought it down with
a most delicate crash upon the strings. Then softly, slowly, he passed
into a weird fantasy. The Indians sat breathless. Upon them it acted
more impressively than the others: besides, the player's eye was
searching them now; he was playing into their very bodies. And they
responded with some swift shocks of recognition crossing their faces.
Suddenly the old Indian sprang up. He thrust his arms out, and made, as
if unconsciously, some fantastic yet solemn motions. The player smiled
in a far-off fashion, and presently ran the bow upon the strings in
an exquisite cry; and then a beautiful avalanche of sound slid from a
distance, growing nearer and nearer, till it swept through the room, and
imbedded all in its sweetness.

At this the old Indian threw himself forward at the player's feet. "It
is the song of the White Weaver, the maker of the world--the music from
the Hills of the Mighty Men.... I knew it--I knew it--but never like
that. ... It was lost to the world; the wild cry of the lofty stars...."
His face was wet.

The girl too had risen. She came forward as if in a dream and reverently
touched the arm of the musician, who paused now, and was looking at them
from under his long eyelashes. She said whisperingly: "Are you a spirit?
Do you come from the Hills of the Mighty Men?"

He answered gravely: "I am no spirit. But I have journeyed in the Hills
of the Mighty Men and along their ancient hunting-grounds. This that I
have played is the ancient music of the world--the music of Jubal and
his comrades. It comes humming from the Poles; it rides laughing down
the planets; it trembles through the snow; it gives joy to the bones
of the wind.... And I am the voice of it," he added; and he drew up his
loose unmanageable body till it looked enormous, firm, and dominant.

The girl's fingers ran softly over to his breast. "I will follow you,"
she said, "when you go again to the Happy Valleys.