ront walk was bordered by
geraniums and hollyhocks; and honeysuckle climbed the pillars of the
porch. Behind the house there was a shady little orchard; and, back of
the orchard, an old-fashioned, very fragrant rose-garden, divided by a
long grape arbor, extended to the shallow waters of a wandering creek;
and on the bank a rustic seat was placed, beneath the sycamores.

From the first bend of the road, where it left the town and became
(after some indecision) a country highway--called the pike--rather than
a proud city boulevard, a pathway led through the fields to end at some
pasture bars opposite the brick house.

John Harkless was leaning on the pasture bars. The stars were wan, and
the full moon shone over the fields. Meadows and woodlands lay quiet
under the old, sweet marvel of a June night. In the wide monotony of
the flat lands, there sometimes comes a feeling that the whole earth is
stretched out before one. To-night it seemed to lie so, in the pathos of
silent beauty, all passive and still; yet breathing an antique message,
sad, mysterious, reassuring. But there had come a divine melody adrift
on the air. Through the open windows it floated. Indoors some one struck
a peal of silver chords, like a harp touched by a lover, and a woman's
voice was lifted. John Harkless leaned on the pasture bars and listened
with upraised head and parted lips.

"To thy chamber window roving, love hath led my feet."

The Lord sent manna to the children of Israel in the wilderness.
Harkless had been five years in Plattville, and a woman's voice singing
Schubert's serenade came to him at last as he stood by the pasture bars
of Jones's field and listened and rested his dazzled eyes on the big,
white face of the moon.

How long had it been since he had heard a song, or any discourse of
music other than that furnished by the Plattville Band--not that he had
not taste for a brass band! But music that he loved always gave him an
ache of delight and the twinge of reminiscences of old, gay days gone
forever. To-night his memory leaped to the last day of a June gone seven
years; to a morning when the little estuary waves twinkled in the bright
sun about the boat in which he sat, the trim launch that brought a
cheery party ashore from their schooner to the Casino landing at Winter
Harbor, far up on the Maine coast.

It was the happiest of those last irresponsible days before he struck
into his work in the world and became a failure. T