it was
sweet, though, and reminded me of a sugar-squirrel turning the wheel
of a candy-cage.

"'Now,' I says to my neighbour, 'he's a showin' off. He thinks he's
a-doin' of it, but he ain't got no ide, no plan of nothin'. If he'd
play a tune of some kind or other I'd----'

"But my neighbour says 'Hush,' very impatient.

"I was just about to git up and go home, bein' tired of that
foolishness, when I heard a little bird waking away off in the woods,
and callin' sleepy-like to his mate, and I looked up, and I see that
Rubin was beginnin' to take some interest in his business, and I set
down agin. It was the peep of the day. The light came faint from the
east, the breeze blowed gentle and fresh, some birds waked up in the
orchard, then some more in the trees near the house, and all begun
singin' together. People began to stir, and the gal opened the
shutters. Just then the first beam of the sun fell upon the blossoms
a leetle more, and it techt the roses on the bushes, and the next
thing it was the broad day: the sun fairly blazed, the birds sang
like they'd split their throats; all the leaves were movin' and
flashin' diamonds of dew, and the whole wide world was bright and
happy as a king. Seemed to me like there was a good breakfast in
every house in the land, and not a sick child or woman anywhere. It
was a fine mornin'.

"And I says to my neighbour, 'That's music, that is.'

"But he glared at me like he'd cut my throat.

"Presently the wind turned; it began to thicken up and a kind of
thick grey mist came over things; I got low-spirited directly. Then a
silver rain began to fall. I could see the drops touch the ground,
some flashed up like long pearl earrings, and the rest rolled away
like rubies. It was pretty, but melancholy. Then the pearls gathered
themselves into long strands and necklaces, and then they melted into
thin silver streams running between golden gravels, and then the
streams joined each other at the bottom of the hill, and made a brook
that flowed silent, except that you could kinder see music,
especially when the bushes on the bank moved as the music went along
down the valley. I could smell the flowers in the meadow. But the sun
didn't shine nor the birds sing; it was a foggy day, but not cold.

"The most curious thing was the little white angel boy, like you see
in pictures, that run ahead of the music brook, and led it on and on,
away out of the world, where no man ever was--_I_ never wa