o do something and be a MAN, and just
went and made himself a devilish fool. But there must be something in
you that understands things--all kinds of things--or you couldn't put it
all into music the way you do. How do you do it? How in--how DO you do
it, young Felix?"

"I don't know. But I play differently to different people. I don't know
how that is. When I'm alone with you I have to play one way; and
when Janet comes over here to listen I feel quite another way--not so
thrilling, but happier and lonelier. And that day when Jessie Blair was
here listening I felt as if I wanted to laugh and sing--as if the violin
wanted to laugh and sing all the time."

The strange, golden gleam flashed through old Abel's sunken eyes.

"God," he muttered under his breath, "I believe the boy can get into
other folk's souls somehow, and play out what HIS soul sees there."

"What's that you say?" inquired Felix, petting his fiddle.

"Nothing--never mind--go on. Something lively now, young Felix. Stop
probing into my soul, where you haven't no business to be, you infant,
and play me something out of your own--something sweet and happy and
pure."

"I'll play the way I feel on sunshiny mornings, when the birds are
singing and I forget I have to be a minister," said Felix simply.

A witching, gurgling, mirthful strain, like mingled bird and brook song,
floated out on the still air, along the path where the red and golden
maple leaves were falling very softly, one by one. The Reverend Stephen
Leonard heard it, as he came along the way, and the Reverend Stephen
Leonard smiled. Now, when Stephen Leonard smiled, children ran to him,
and grown people felt as if they looked from Pisgah over to some fair
land of promise beyond the fret and worry of their care-dimmed earthly
lives.

Mr. Leonard loved music, as he loved all things beautiful, whether in
the material or the spiritual world, though he did not realize how much
he loved them for their beauty alone, or he would have been shocked and
remorseful. He himself was beautiful. His figure was erect and youthful,
despite seventy years. His face was as mobile and charming as a woman's,
yet with all a man's tried strength and firmness in it, and his dark
blue eyes flashed with the brilliance of one and twenty; even his silken
silvery hair could not make an old man of him. He was worshipped by
everyone who knew him, and he was, in so far as mortal man may be,
worthy of that worship.

"O