t last they should hear him--the
great Bach.

The silence waited, deep and patient and unerring, as it had waited a
decade--the touch of this man. A sound crossed it and the audience
turned bewildered faces. Question and dissent and wonder were in
them.... Not some mighty fugue, as they had hoped--not even an aria, but
a simple air from a quaint, old-fashioned choral,--"By the waters, the
waters of Babylon." They looked at one another with lifted brows.
Reinken's choral!--and played with Reinken's very touch--a gentle,
hurrying rhythm ... as Reinken used to play it--when he was young.... In
a moment they understood. Tears stood in bewildered eyes and a look of
sweet good-will swept the church. He had given back to them their own.
Their thought ran tenderly to the old man above, hearkening to his own
soul coming to him, strong and swift and eternal, out of the years.
Underneath the choral and above it and around, went the soul of Bach,
steadfast and true, wishing only to serve, and through service making
beautiful. He filled with wonder and majesty and tenderness the simple
old choral.

A murmur ran through the church, a sound of love and admiration. And
above, with streaming eyes, an old man groped his way to the organ, his
hands held out to touch the younger ones that reached to him. "I thought
my work had died," he said slowly, "Now that it lives, I can die in
peace."

A WINDOW OF MUSIC

I

"About so high, I should think," said the girl, with a swift twinkle.
She measured off a diminutive man on the huge blue-and-white porcelain
stove and stood back to survey it. "And about as big," she added
reflectively.

Her sister laughed. The girl nodded again.

"And _terribly_ homely," she said, making a little mouth. Her eyes
laughed. She leaned forward with a mysterious air. "And, Marie, his coat
is green, and his trousers are--white!"

The two girls giggled in helpless amusement. They had a stolid German
air of family resemblance, but the laughing eyes of the younger danced
in their round setting, while the sleepy blue ones of the older girl
followed the twinkling pantomime with a look of half protest.

"They were in the big reception-room," went on the girl, "and I bounced
in on them. Mamma Rosine was giving him the family history--you and me."

They giggled again.

The younger one drew down her face and folded her hands in matronly
dignity, gazing pensively at the blue-and-white stove, her head