ht
fine length, the smooth trunk. 'It will do,' he says, and with his axe
he chops it down. Do you think it does not hurt the tree? After the long
years of fighting, to be cut like that?

"Then it falls, crashing heavy through the branches to the ground. See,
there must always be pain, even at the end. Then more cutting, more
bleeding, more heat, more cold. Fine tools--steel knives that tear and
split the fibres apart. Do you think it does not hurt? More sun, more
cold, still more cutting, tearing, and throwing aside. Then, one day, it
is finished, and there is mine Cremona--all the strength, all the
beauty, all the pain, made into mine violin!

"But the end is not yet. God is working with me and mine as well as with
mine instrument. As yet, I do not know that it is for me--it comes to me
through pain.

"One old gentleman, one of the first to travel abroad from this country
for pleasure, he goes to Italy, he finds it in the hands of one ignorant
drunkard, and he buys it for little. He brings it home, but he cannot
play, and no one else can play; he does not know its value, but it
pleases him and he takes it. For long years, it stays in one attic, with
the dust and the cobwebs, kicked aside by careless feet.

"Meanwhile, I know one lovely young lady. I meet her by chance, and we
like each other, oh, so much! 'Franz,' she says to me, 'you live on one
hill in West Lancaster, and mine mother, she would never let me speak
with you, so I must see you sometimes, quite by accident, elsewhere. On
pleasant days, I often go to walk in the woods. Mine mother likes me to
be outdoors.' So, many times, we meet and we talk of strange things.
Each day we love each other more, and all the time her mother does not
suspect. We plan to go away together and never let anyone know until we
are married and it is too late, but first I must find work.

"'Franz,' she says to me one day, 'up in mine attic there is one old
violin, which I think must be valuable. Mine mother is away with a
friend and the house is by itself. Will you not come up to see?'

"So we go, and the house is very quiet. No one is there. We go like two
thieves to the attic, laughing as though we were children once more.
Presently we find the violin, and I see that it is one Cremona, very
old, very fine, but with no strings. I fit on some strings that I have
in mine pocket, but there is no bow and I can only play pizzicato. I
need to hear the tone but one moment to know wh