would creep along under the
stone wall, and crouching there would wait and listen for the music.
Several evenings he had come and waited, and waited, and waited--and not
a note or a voice did he hear.

Once it had rained and he didn't mind it much, for he expected every
moment the music would strike up, you know--and who cares for cold, or
wet, or even hunger, if one can hear good music! The air grew chill and
the boy's threadbare jacket stuck to his bony form like a postage-stamp
to a letter. Little rivulets of water ran down his hair and streamed off
his nose and cheeks. He waited--he was waiting for the music.

He might have waited until the water dissolved his insignificant cosmos
into just plain, yellow mud, and then he would have been simply
distributed all along the gutter down to the stream, and down the stream
to the river, and down the river to the ocean; and no one would ever
have heard of him again.

But Signore Barezzi's coachman came along that night, keeping close to
the fence under the trees to avoid the wet; and the coachman fell over
the boy.

Now, when we fall over anything we always want to kick it--no matter
what it is, be it cat, dog, stump, stick, stone or human. The coachman
being but clay (undissolved) turned and kicked the boy. Then he seized
him by the collar, and accused him of being a thief. The lad
acknowledged the indictment, and stammeringly tried to explain that it
was only music he was trying to steal; and that it really made no
difference because even if one did fill himself full of the music, there
was just as much left for other people, since music was different from
most things.

The thought was not very well expressed, although the idea was all
right, but the coachman failed to grasp it. So he tingled the boy's bare
legs with the whip he carried, by way of answer, duly cautioning him
never to let it occur again, and released the prisoner on parole.

But the boy forgot and came back the next night. He sat on the ground
below the wall, intending to keep out of sight; but when the music began
he stood up, and now, with face pressed between the pickets, he
listened.

The wind sighed softly through the orange-trees; the air was heavy with
the perfume of flowers; the low of cattle came from across the valley,
and on the evening breeze from an open casement rose the strong,
vibrant, yet tender, strains of Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata." The lad
listened.

"Do you like music?"