lections of
the boy and of the esteem and affection in which he had then held him.
There was now no one who spoke of the dead musician with more generous
praise than his master. In his own music-room the master placed the
piano on which his pupil had been used to play. It had been specially
bequeathed to him. It was the dead man's gift.

But now the old man became himself conscious that he was not as he had
been. The fountains were dried up. Melody had ceased to come. He was
arid and unproductive. His fear that his power was leaving him tended
the more to diminish it. There were many long days and nights when he
could do nothing; and at such seasons he would not enter his music-room
upstairs, but sat in the room below it, trying sometimes to divert his
mind by reading, and at other times cursing the wretchedness into which
the course of nature had brought him.

After a long while it happened that one night when he sat late alone,
his wretchedness seemed to him more than he could bear. In a few weeks
he was to play before the King and there would be many great musicians
in the audience. On such occasions it had always been his custom to
produce some new work. Now he had nothing to give them. He would have to
fall back on the compositions of his younger days. He could picture in
his mind the meaning looks which the musicians would interchange. He
could hear their polite applause, and it was like a torture. The King,
himself no mean musician, might ask some question. He could not go into
that company and thus fail. It was not possible. It could not be asked
of him thus to debase himself. And there seemed to him but one
alternative--a little more than usual of that laudanum in which he had
lately sought inspiration.

But as he raised the glass to his lips he heard something so unexpected
that the glass crashed to the floor. In the music-room overhead someone
was playing the piano. Who could it be? No servant of his had that
skill, and besides, hours before his servants had gone to sleep. It was
divine music, entrancing, uplifting.

For a moment he hesitated, and then the desire to know overcame his
fears. He went up the stairs, and in the passage outside the music-room
he noted that a light showed under the door. Someone had switched the
light on then. Was it the carelessness of a servant? "Quite possibly,"
he said to himself. "Quite possibly."

He opened the door and entered, and his eyes flew to the piano. No one
wa