inner circle of confidence. Sarah could
be loyal and she could be silent. From that day she and Rosemary were
leagued with Louisa and Alec to circumvent the town authorities.

Not that authority, in any guise, was ever manifested. At least it had
not been so far. Rosemary, on the beautiful moonlight nights when "Old
Fiddlestrings" wandered again up and down the road, playing the
"Serenade" with his soul in his fingers, found it hard to believe that
there could be such ugly things in the world as poverty and fear. She
was sure that Louisa and Alec must be mistaken--or else the money would
come from somewhere--it must. There could not be such music and such
moonlight and such heavenly scented breezes on an earth that was
anything but wholly lovely, wholly kind.

"My dear child, you must go to bed," Mrs. Willis remonstrated on the
third night when she came in to find Rosemary's room flooded with
moonlight and Rosemary herself kneeling at the window. "You can hear
the music just as well in bed and I don't like to have you lose so much
sleep."

And then she brought a light comfortable from the bed and, wrapped in
that, knelt with Rosemary at the window till the player and his violin
walked wearily away out of sight. After all, what was the loss of a
little sleep as compared with such playing?

"Heard Old Fiddlestrings again last night," said Mr. Hildreth, drawing
up before the kitchen door the next morning while Richard carried in
the piece of ice they had brought from the creamery for Winnie. "I
declare it's a mercy we don't have full moon more than once a month; no
one would get a fair night's sleep. Does he bother you?"

"_Bother_ us?" echoed Rosemary in astonishment. "Bother us? Why, it
is the loveliest playing we have ever heard!"

Richard judged this an excellent time to ask a question.

"How would you like to go over to the poor farm?" he suggested, pulling
Shirley back from the dusty wheel and taking a firm grip on Sarah with
the other hand to prevent her from crawling under the horse--for what
reason she alone knew.

"The poor farm?" Rosemary's mind immediately leaped to the Gays.

"Oh, Richard, do let's go!" she cried, her enthusiasm kindling. "I've
always wanted to see the poor farm."

"Well, your brother goes there often enough," said Mr. Hildreth drily.
"It's thanks to him that the new Board of Freeholders put in decent
plumbing all through the place."

Richard climbed back into his s