She could not reply at once. The question brought up so much of the
past, such tragedy! She spoke with composure at last:

"He can come. He is free. He is mine--wholly mine."

The choir-master looked across the small room at his pupil, who, upon
the discovery of the visitor's identity, had withdrawn as far as
possible from him.

"And you are willing to come?" he asked, wishing to make the first
advance toward possible acquaintanceship on the new footing.

No reply came. The mother smiled at her awe-stricken son and hastened to
his rescue.

"He is overwhelmed," she said, her own faith in him being merely
strengthened by this revelation of his fright. "He is overwhelmed. This
means so much more to him than you can understand."

"But you will come?" the choir-master persisted in asking. "You _will_
come?"

The lad stirred uneasily on his chair.

"Yes, sir," he said all but inaudibly.

His inquisitive, interesting friend of the park path, then, was himself
choir-master of St. John's! And he had asked him whether _he_ knew
anything about the cathedral! Whether _he_ liked music! Whether _he_
knew how boys got into the school! He had betrayed his habit of idly
hanging about the old building where the choir practised and of singing
with them to show what he could do and would do if he had the chance;
and because he could not keep from singing. He had called one of the
Apostles Jim! And another Apostle Pete! He had rejoiced that Gabriel had
not been strong enough to stand up in a high wind!

Thus with mortification he remembered the day. Then his thoughts were
swept on to what now opened before him: he was to be taken into the
choir, he was to sing in the cathedral. The high, blinding, stately
magnificence of its scenes and processions lay before him.

More than this. The thing which had long been such a torture of desire
to him, the hope that had grown within him until it began to burst open,
had come true; his dream was a reality: he was to begin to learn music,
he was to go where it was being taught. And the master who was to take
him by the hand and lead him into that world of song sat there quietly
talking with his mother about the matter and looking across at him,
studying him closely.

No; none of this was true yet. It might never be true. First, he must be
put to the test. The man smiling there was sternly going to draw out of
him what was in him. He was going to examine him and see what he
amounted to. An