olled along the old ramparts of ancient
fortifications that once had been formidable, but now were only
vision-like with their charming mingling of broken grey walls and
wayward vine and ivy. From the broad coping on which he sat for a
moment, level with the rounded tops of clipped plane trees, he saw the
esplanade far below lying in shadow. Here and there a yellow sunbeam
crept in and lay upon the fallen yellow leaves, and from the height he
looked down and saw that the townsfolk were walking to and fro in the
cool of the evening. He could just hear the sound of their slow
footfalls, and the murmur of their voices floated up to him through the
gaps between the trees. The figures looked like shadows as he caught
glimpses of their quiet movements far below.

He sat there for some time pondering, bathed in the waves of murmurs and
half-lost echoes that rose to his ears, muffled by the leaves of the
plane trees. The whole town, and the little hill out of which it grew as
naturally as an ancient wood, seemed to him like a being lying there
half asleep on the plain and crooning to itself as it dozed.

And, presently, as he sat lazily melting into its dream, a sound of
horns and strings and wood instruments rose to his ears, and the town
band began to play at the far end of the crowded terrace below to the
accompaniment of a very soft, deep-throated drum. Vezin was very
sensitive to music, knew about it intelligently, and had even ventured,
unknown to his friends, upon the composition of quiet melodies with
low-running chords which he played to himself with the soft pedal when
no one was about. And this music floating up through the trees from an
invisible and doubtless very picturesque band of the townspeople wholly
charmed him. He recognised nothing that they played, and it sounded as
though they were simply improvising without a conductor. No definitely
marked time ran through the pieces, which ended and began oddly after
the fashion of wind through an Aeolian harp. It was part of the place
and scene, just as the dying sunlight and faintly breathing wind were
part of the scene and hour, and the mellow notes of old-fashioned
plaintive horns, pierced here and there by the sharper strings, all half
smothered by the continuous booming of the deep drum, touched his soul
with a curiously potent spell that was almost too engrossing to be quite
pleasant.

There was a certain queer sense of bewitchment in it all. The music
seeme