yce, sitting on his absurd piazza, with his knees jambed against
the balustrade, and his chair back against the dun-colored wall of his
house, seemed to be walking in the cathedral of the redwood forest,
with blue above him, a vast hymn in his ears, pungent perfume in his
nostrils, and mighty shafts of trees lifting themselves to heaven, proud
and erect as pure men before their Judge. He stood on a mountain at
sunrise, and saw the marvels of the amethystine clouds below his feet,
heard an eternal and white silence, such as broods among the everlasting
snows, and saw an eagle winging for the sun. He was in a city, and away
from him, diverging like the spokes of a wheel, ran thronging streets,
and to his sense came the beat, beat, beat of the city's heart. He saw
the golden alchemy of a chosen race; saw greed transmitted to progress;
saw that which had enslaved men, work at last to their liberation; heard
the roar of mighty mills, and on the streets all the peoples of earth
walking with common purpose, in fealty and understanding. And then, from
the swelling of this concourse of great sounds, came a diminuendo, calm
as philosophy, and from that, nothingness.

Boyce sat still for a long time, listening to the echoes which this
music had awakened in his soul. He retired, at length, content,
but determined that upon the morrow he would watch--the day being
Sunday--for the musician who had so moved and taught him.

He arose early, therefore, and having prepared his own simple breakfast
of fruit and coffee, took his station by the window to watch for the
man. For he felt convinced that the exposition he had heard was that of
a masculine mind. The long, hot hours of the morning went by, but the
front door of the house next to his did not open.

"These artists sleep late," he complained. Still he watched. He was
too much afraid of losing him to go out for dinner. By three in the
afternoon he had grown impatient. He went to the house next door and
rang the bell. There was no response. He thundered another appeal. An
old woman with a cloth about her head answered the door. She was very
deaf, and Boyce had difficulty in making himself understood.

"The family is in the country," was all she would say. "The family will
not be home till September."

"But there is some one living here?" shouted Boyce.

"_I_ live here," she said with dignity, putting back a wisp of dirty
gray hair behind her ear. "It is my house. I sublet to the f