ll upon you before I leave--may I?' He turned to me
while she stood silent. 'I wish to see your father,' he added.

'Certainly,' she answered, blushing, 'you may come--if you care to come.

The musician had begun to thrum the strings of his violin. We turned
to look at him. He still sat in his chair, his ear bent to the echoing
chamber of the violin. Soon he laid his bow to the strings and a great
chord hushed every whisper and died into a sweet, low melody, in which
his thought seemed to be feeling its way through sombre paths of sound.
The music brightened, the bow went faster, and suddenly 'The Girl I Left
Behind Me' came rushing off the strings. A look of amazement gathered on
the elder's face and deepened into horror. It went from one to another
as if it had been a dish of ipecac. Ann Jane Foster went directly for
her things, and with a most unchristian look hurried out into the night.
Half a dozen others followed her, while the unholy music went on, its
merry echoes rioting in that sacred room, hallowed with memories of the
hour of conviction, of the day of mourning, of the coming of the bride
in her beauty.

Deacon Hospur rose and began to drawl a sort of apology, when the player
stopped suddenly and shot an oath at him. The deacon staggered under the
shock of it. His whiskers seemed to lift a bit like the hair of a cat
under provocation. Then he tried to speak, but only stuttered helplessly
a moment as if his tongue were oscillating between silence and
profanity, and was finally pulled down by his wife, who had laid hold of
his coat tails. If it had been any other man than Deacon Hospur it would
have gone badly with the musician then and there, but we boys saw his
discomfiture with positive gratitude. In a moment all rose, the dishes
were gathered up, and many hurried away with indignant glances at the
poor elder, who was busy taking counsel with some of the brethren.

I have never seen a more pathetic figure than that of poor Nick Goodall
as he sat there thrumming the strings of which he was a Heaven-born
master. I saw him often after that night--a poor, halfwitted creature,
who wandered from inn to inn there in the north country, trading music
for hospitality. A thoroughly intelligible sentence never passed his
lips, but he had a great gift of eloquence in music. Nobody knew whence
he had come or any particular of his birth or training or family. But
for his sullen temper, that broke into wild, unmeaning pro