hensions. Gretchen began to cry, through nervous excitement, and with
the first rush of tears came to her, as usual, the thought of her violin.

She took up the instrument, tuned it with nervous fingers, and drew the
bow across the strings, making them shriek as with pain, and then drifted
into the air the music of the Traumerei.

"Fiddling, Gretchen--fiddling in the shadow of death? I don't know but
what you are right--that tune, too!"

The music trembled; the haunting strain quivered, rose and descended, and
was repeated over and over again.

"There is no movement in the pines," said Mrs. Woods. "It is growing
darker. Play on. It does seem as though that strain was stolen from heaven
to overcome evil with."

Gretchen played. An hour passed, and the moon rose. Then she laid down the
violin and listened.

"Oh, Gretchen, he is coming! I know that form. It is Benjamin. He is
coming alone. What shall we do? He is--right before the door!"

Gretchen's eye fell upon the musical glasses, which were among the few
things that she had brought from the East and which had belonged to her
old German home. She had tuned them early in the evening by pouring water
into them, as she had been taught to do in her old German village, and she
wet her fingers and touched them to the tender forest hymn:

"Now the woods are all sleeping."

"He has stopped," said Mrs. Woods. "He is listening--play."

The music filled the cabin. No tones can equal in sweetness the musical
glasses, and the trembling nerves of Gretchen's fingers gave a spirit of
pathetic pleading to the old German forest hymn. Over and over again she
played the air, waiting for the word of Mrs. Woods to cease.

"He is going," said Mrs. Woods, slowly. "He is moving back toward the
pines. He has changed his mind, or has gone for his band. You may stop
now."

Mrs. Woods watched by the split shutter until past midnight. Then she
laid down on the bed, and Gretchen watched, and one listened while the
other slept, by turns, during the night. But no footstep was heard. The
midsummer sun blazed over the pines in the early morning; birds sang gayly
in the dewy air, and Gretchen prepared the morning meal as usual, then
made her way to the log school-house.

She found Benjamin there. He met her with a happy face.

"Bad Indian come to your cabin last night," said he. "He mean evil; he
hate old woman. She wah-wah too much, and he hate. Bad Indian hear
music--violin; he be pl