if enamored of
the perfect thing that they had created, lingering here and there with
rapturous tenderness on some special beauty,--the graceful arch of
the neck, the melting curves of the cheeks, the delicious swell of the
breasts.

When he had satisfied himself for the moment, he took the bow, and
lifting the violin under his chin, inclined his head fondly toward it
and began to play.

The tune at first seemed muffled, but had a curious bite, that began
in distant echoes, but after a few minutes' the playing grew firmer and
clearer, ringing out at last with velvety richness and strength until
the atmosphere was satiated with harmony. No more ethereal note ever
flew out of a bird's throat than Anthony Croft set free from this
violin, his _liebling_, his "swan song," made in the year he had lost
his eyesight.

Anthony Croft had been the only son of his mother, and she a widow. His
boyhood had been exactly like that of all the other boys in Edgewood,
save that he hated school a trifle more, if possible, than any of the
others; though there was a unanimity of aversion in this matter that
surprised and wounded teachers and parents.

The school was the ordinary "deestrick" school of that time; there were
not enough scholars for what Cyse Higgins called a "degraded" school.
The difference between Anthony and the other boys lay in the reason as
well as the degree of his abhorrence.

He had come into the world a naked, starving human soul; he longed to
clothe himself, and he was hungry and ever hungrier for knowledge; but
never within the four walls of the village schoolhouse could he get hold
of one fact that would yield him its secret sense, one glimpse of clear
light that would shine in upon the "darkness which may be felt" in his
mind, one thought or word that would feed his soul.

The only place where his longings were ever stilled, where he seemed at
peace with himself, where he understood what he was made for, was out
of doors in the woods. When he should have been poring over the sweet,
palpitating mysteries of the multiplication table, his vagrant gaze was
always on the open window near which he sat. He could never study when a
fly buzzed on the window-pane; he was always standing on the toes of his
bare feet, trying to locate and understand the buzz that puzzled him.
The book was a mute, soulless thing that had no relation to his
inner world of thought and feeling. He turned ever from the dead
seven-times-six