ft low sound that seemed
to rise out of the good earth and mingle with the vibrant air, the
song of birds, the whisper of trees, and the murmuring water. Then
came another, and another note, then chords, and chords upon these,
and by-and-by, rolling tides of melody, until, as it seemed to the
listeners, the air ached with the incomparable song; and men and women
wept, and children hid their heads in the laps of their mothers, and
young men and maidens dreamed dreams never to be forgotten. For one
short hour the music went on, then twilight came. Presently the sounds
grew fainter, and exquisitely painful, and now a low sob seemed to pass
through all the heart of the organ, and then silence fell, and in the
sacred pause, Hepnon came out among them all, pale and desolate. He
looked at them a minute most sadly, and then lifting up his arms towards
the Golden Pipes, now hidden in the dusk, he cried low and brokenly:

"O my God, give me back my dream!"

Then his crutch seemed to give way beneath him, and he sank upon the
ground, faint and gasping.

They raised him up, and women and men whispered in his ear

"Ah, the beautiful, beautiful music, Hepnon!" But he only said: "O my
God, O my God, give me back my dream!" When he had said it thrice, he
turned his face to where his organ was in the cedar-house, and then his
eyes closed, and he fell asleep: and they could not wake him. But at
sunrise the next morning a shiver passed through him, and then a cold
quiet stole over him, and Hepnon and the music of the Golden Pipes
departed from the Voshti Hills, and came again no more.

THE GUARDIAN OF THE FIRE

"Height unto height answereth knowledge."

His was the first watch, the farthest fire, for Shaknon Hill towered
above the great gulf, and looked back also over thirty leagues of
country towards the great city. There came a time again when all the
land was threatened. From sovereign lands far off, two fleets were
sailing hard to reach the wide basin before the walled city, the one to
save, the other to destroy. If Tinoir, the Guardian of the Fire, should
sight the destroying fleet, he must light two fires on Shaknon Hill,
and then, at the edge of the wide basin, in a treacherous channel, the
people would send out fire-rafts to burn the ships of the foe. Five
times in the past had Tinoir been the Guardian of the Fire, and five
times had the people praised him; but praise and his scanty wage were
all he got.

The hut i