her home was one where music was unheard, and his method
of unfolding to the girl the most spiritual and fundamental of all the
arts was to give her SCALES. He was a kindly, well-intentioned fellow,
and would not willingly have hurt a sparrow; but he took a nature
doomed to suffer for lack of self-expression, and succeeded in walling
up the great river of music which might have given her what she lacked.
He hid the edifice and offered her scaffolding--then wondered.

II.

Elise was consistent in few things, but her love for Richard, the
youngest of the family, was of a depth and a mature tenderness that
never varied. Doomed to an insufficient will-power and an easy,
plastic nature that lent itself readily to the abbreviation 'Dick,' he
quickly succumbed to his fiery-tinted sister, and became a willing dupe
in all her escapades.

At her order he turned the hose on the head-gardener; when told to put
mucilage on the rector's chair at dinner, he merely asked for the pot.
On six different occasions she offered him soap, telling him it was
toffy, and each time he bit of it generously and without suspicion.
Every one else in the house represented law and order to him--Elise was
the spirit of outlawry, and he her slave. She taught him a dance of
her own invention entitled 'The Devil and the Maiden' (with a certain
inconsistency casting him as the maiden and herself as the Devil), and
frequently, when ordered to go to bed, they would descend to the
servants' quarters and perform it to the great delight of the family
retainers.

A favourite haunt of theirs was the stables, where they would persuade
the grooms to place them on their father's chargers; and they were
frequent visitors at feeding-time, taking a never-ending delight in the
gourmandism of the whinnying beasts, and finding particular joy in
acquiring the language and the mannerisms of the stablemen, which they
would reserve for, and solemnly use at, the next gathering of the
neighbouring gentry.

When Elise was ten and Dick seven, she read him highwaymen's tales
until his large blue eyes almost escaped from their sockets. It was at
the finish of one of these narratives of derring-do that she whispered
temptation into his ear, with the result that they bided their
opportunity, and, when the one groom on duty was asleep, repaired to
the stables armed with a loaded shot-gun. After herculean efforts they
succeeded in harnessing Lord Durwent's famous hunter wi