wn on paper and learned by heart.

It was with this longing to repeat the few haunting notes that hummed in
his brain that Nils went to the schoolmaster one day and asked him for
the loan of his fiddle. But the schoolmaster, hearing that Nils could
not play, thought his request a foolish one and refused.

Nevertheless, that visit became an important event, and a turning-point
in the boy's life. For he was moved to confide in the schoolmaster, who
was a kindly old man, and fond of clever boys; and he became interested
in Nils. Though he regarded Nils's desire to record the Nixy's strains
as absurd, he offered to teach him to play. There was good stuff in the
lad, he thought, and when he had out-grown his fantastic nonsense, he
might, very likely, make a good fiddler.

Thus it came to pass that the charcoal-burner's son learned to play
the violin. He had not had half a dozen lessons before he set about
imitating the Nixy's notes which he had heard in the waterfall.

"It was this way," he said to the schoolmaster, pressing his ear against
the violin, while he ran the bow lightly over the strings; "or rather it
was this way," making another ineffectual effort. "No, no, that wasn't
it, either. It's no use, schoolmaster: I shall never be able to do it!"
he cried, flinging the violin on the table and rushing out of the door.

When he returned the next day he was heartily ashamed of his impatience.
To try to catch the Nixy's notes after half a dozen lessons was, of
course, an absurdity.

The master told him simply to banish such folly from his brain, to apply
himself diligently to his scales, and not to bother himself about the
Nixy.

That seemed to be sound advice and Nils accepted it with contrition.
He determined never to repeat his silly experiment. But when the next
midsummer night came, a wild yearning possessed him, and he stole out
noiselessly into the forest, and sat down on a stone by the river,
listening intently.

For a long while he heard nothing but the monotonous boom of the water
plunging into the deep. But, strangely enough, there was a vague, hushed
rhythm in this thundering roar; and after a while he seemed to hear
a faint strain, ravishingly sweet, which vibrated on the air for an
instant and vanished.

It seemed to steal upon his ear unawares, and the moment he
listened, with a determination to catch it, it was gone. But sweet it
was--inexpressibly sweet.

Let the master talk as much as he liked