elevating. He stepped across the floor, still, stately, and
free. He laid down his violin, and seated himself where Mary told him,
in her father's arm-chair by the fire. Gentle nothings with a down of
rainbows were talked until tea was over, and then without a word they
set to their music--Mary and Joseph, with their own hearts and Letty
for their audience.

They had not gone far on the way to fairyland, however, when Beenie
called Letty from the room, to speak to a friend and customer, who had
come from the country on a sudden necessity for something from the
shop. Letty, finding herself not quite equal to the emergency, came in
her turn to call Mary: she went as quietly as if she were leaving a
tiresome visitor. The music was broken, and Joseph left alone with the
dumb instruments.

But in his hands solitude and a violin were sure to marry in music. He
began to play, forgot himself utterly, and, when the customer had gone
away satisfied, and the ladies returned to the parlor, there he stood
with his eyes closed, playing on, nor knowing they were beside him.
They sat down, and listened in silence.

Mary had not listened long before she found herself strangely moved.
Her heart seemed to swell up into her throat, and it was all she could
do to keep from weeping. A little longer and she was compelled to
yield, and the silent tears flowed freely. Letty, too, was
overcome--more than ever she had been by music. She was not so open to
its influences as Mary, but her eyes were full, and she sat thinking of
her Tom, far in the regions that are none the less true that we can not
see them.

A mood had taken shape in the mind of the blacksmith, and wandered from
its home, seeking another country. It is not the ghosts of evil deeds
that alone take shape, and go forth to wander the earth. Let but a mood
be strong enough, and the soul, clothing itself in that mood as with a
garment, can walk abroad and haunt the world. Thus, in a garment of
mood whose color and texture was music, did the soul of Joseph Jasper
that evening, like a homeless ghost, come knocking at the door of Mary
Marston. It was the very being of the man, praying for admittance, even
as little Abel might have crept up to the gate from which his mother
had been driven, and, seeing nothing of the angel with the flaming
sword, knocked and knocked, entreating to be let in, pleading that all
was not right with the world in which he found himself. And there Mary
saw J