cold
water of Florida, drawn from his shallow well, and went out to the
chimney to see about dinner. The chimney was doing finely: a fiery plume
of sparks waved from its white top, a red bed of coals glowed below.
Scip moved about with as much equanimity as though he had a row of
kitchen-tables upon which to arrange his pans and dishes, instead of
ruined blocks of stone, under the open sky. The dinner was good. Carl,
awake at last, was carried out to the table to enjoy it, and then
brought back to his chair in front of the house to smoke his evening
pipe.

"I must make you a pair of crutches," said Deal.

"One will do; my right ankle is not much hurt, I think."

The fall, the air of the swamp, and the inward drenching of brandy had
left Carl looking much as usual; the tenacious disease that held him
swallowed the lesser ills. But for the time, at least, his wandering
footsteps were staid.

"I suppose there is no use in my asking, Carl, _why_ you went in there?"
said Deal, after a while.

"No, there isn't. I'm haunted--that's all."

"But what is it that haunts you?"

"Sounds. _You_ couldn't understand, though, if I was to talk all night."

"Perhaps I could; perhaps I can understand more than you imagine. I'll
tell you a story presently; but first you must explain to me, at least
as well as you can, what it is that attracts you in South Devil."

"Oh--well," said Carl, with a long, impatient sigh, closing his eyes
wearily. "I am a musician, you know, a musician _manque_; a musician who
can't play. Something's the matter; I _hear_ music, but can not bring it
out. And I know so well what it ought to be, ought to be and isn't, that
I've broken my violin in pieces a dozen times in my rages about it. Now,
other fellows in orchestras, who _don't_ know, get along very well. But
I couldn't. I've thought at times that, although I can not sound what I
hear with my own hands, perhaps I could _write_ it out so that other men
could sound it. The idea has never come to anything definite yet--that
is, what _you_ would call definite; but it haunts me persistently, and
_now_ it has got into that swamp. The wish," here Carl laid down his
great pipe, and pressed his hand eagerly upon his brother's knee--"the
wish that haunts me--drives me--is to write out the beautiful music of
the South Devil, the sounds one hears in there"--

"But there are no sounds."

"No sounds? You must be deaf! The air fairly reeks with sounds, with
harm