profounder wretchedness
could it hold than all he had already endured?

He rose to his feet stealthily. His eyes were burning in his white
face. He stepped cautiously along the bank of the pond to a place
where the water was deep. He glanced about fearfully. His only
feeling was one of dread lest he be intercepted. He slipped into the
shadow of a pile of logs, then crept to the edge of the dark water.
Suddenly he paused, startled. Something had rustled in the willows.
It was only a muskrat; but as he stood, listening, another sound fell
upon his ear, the sound of a voice singing a familiar hymn. There was
something in the singer's tone, a compelling sweetness, that made John
McIntyre pause on the brink of death to listen.

CHAPTER IX

THE SONG IN THE NIGHT

Though strife, ill fortune and harsh human need
Beat down the soul, at moments blind and dumb
With agony; yet, patience--there shall come
Many great voices from life's outer sea,
Hours of strange triumph, and, when few men heed,
Murmurs and glimpses of eternity.
--ABCHIBALD LAMPMAN.

Miss Ella Anne Long was busy "reddin' up" the parlor, for to-night the
young people of the village who were musically inclined--and, for that
matter, who wasn't?--were to hold a final practice for the Temperance
Society's concert.

The Longs' home was the musical center of the village, the organ being
kept as busy as the telescope, and Miss Long was the leading musician.
Even Elsie Cameron could not compete with her, for Ella Anne was
organist in the church, and had a voice that, when she wished, could
drown out all the rest of the choir. Every one in Elmbrook was
musically inclined, irrespective of talent. To "play a piece" or sing
a solo at a public gathering was the great ambition of every young lady
in the place. Masculine performance on any instrument, except a
mouth-organ or a fiddle, which last was distinctly worldly, was
regarded as rather inclining to effeminacy. But the men all sang, for,
of course, it went without saying that every one could sing bass.
Tenors were scarce, there being only one at present--a young Englishman
who had come out to learn farming at Sandy McQuarry's, and who suffered
from chronic huskiness.

Each of the sopranos had an attendant swain in the basses. That was a
necessity to any smallest hope of enjoyment when the choir went abroad.
To have a sweetheart who could sing alone in public was