of the architect must have been
to melt away the material from before the eyes of the spirit. He hung
in the air in a cloud of stone. As he came in his descent within the
ornaments of one of the basements, he found himself looking through two
thicknesses of stone lace on the nearing city. Down there was the beast
of prey and his victim; but for the moment he was above the region of
sorrow. His weariness and his headache had vanished utterly. With his
mind tossed on its own speechless delight, he was slowly descending
still, when he saw on his left hand a door ajar. He would look what
mystery lay within. A push opened it. He discovered only a little
chamber lined with wood. In the centre stood something--a bench-like
piece of furniture, plain and worn. He advanced a step; peered over the
top of it; saw keys, white and black; saw pedals below: it was an organ!
Two strides brought him in front of it. A wooden stool, polished
and hollowed with centuries of use, was before it. But where was the
bellows? That might be down hundreds of steps below, for he was half-way
only to the ground. He seated himself musingly, and struck, as he
thought, a dumb chord. Responded, up in the air, far overhead, a mighty
booming clang. Startled, almost frightened, even as if Mary St. John had
said she loved him, Robert sprung from the stool, and, without knowing
why, moved only by the chastity of delight, flung the door to the
post. It banged and clicked. Almost mad with the joy of the titanic
instrument, he seated himself again at the keys, and plunged into a
tempest of clanging harmony. One hundred bells hang in that tower of
wonder, an instrument for a city, nay, for a kingdom. Often had Robert
dreamed that he was the galvanic centre of a thunder-cloud of harmony,
flashing off from every finger the willed lightning tone: such was the
unexpected scale of this instrument--so far aloft in the sunny air
rang the responsive notes, that his dream appeared almost realized. The
music, like a fountain bursting upwards, drew him up and bore him aloft.
From the resounding cone of bells overhead he no longer heard their
tones proceed, but saw level-winged forms of light speeding off with
a message to the nations. It was only his roused phantasy; but a
sweet tone is nevertheless a messenger of God; and a right harmony and
sequence of such tones is a little gospel.

At length he found himself following, till that moment unconsciously,
the chain of tunes h