wn in the faces of a
rabble! Ferval kindled with emotion. Here was romance. Brahms and his
dark song under the bowl of the troubled blue sky strongly affected him.
He took the lean, brown hand of the singer and kissed it fervently. She
drew back nervously, but her father struck her on the shoulder
chidingly.

"A trifle too dreary," he rumbled in his heavy bass. "Now, Purcell for
the gentleman, and may he open his heart and his purse for the poor."

"Father," she cried warningly, "we are not beggars, _now_!" She turned
supplicatingly to the young man and made a gesture of dismissal. He
gently shook his head and pretended that he was about to leave, though
he felt that his feet were rooted in the earth, his power of willing
gone.

"Ay, ay, my girl!" continued the musician, "you can sing as well as the
best of them, only you love your sinful old father so much that you have
laid aside your ambitions, to follow him in his pilgrimage of expiation
about this wicked globe. Ah, sir, if you but knew--I _will_ speak,
Debora, for he is a gentleman and a lover of music! If you but knew our
history, you would not be surprised at us. Have ye ever been in Wales?"

Ferval stumbled in his answer. It was overlooked; the old man continued:
"If ye have, ye must have heard of the sin-eaters. I am one of them, I
am an eater of sin--"

Again the girl exclaimed, this time piteously, "Oh, father, remember
your vow!"

"Poor lass! Yes, I was a doer of evil, and I became an eater of sin.
Some day my sins will be forgiven--this is my penance." He pointed to
his instruments. Ferval kept silence. He feared a word would blow away
the cobweb foundations of the narrative. The girl had turned and was
watching a young tilted moon which with a single star made silvery dents
low in the western horizon.

"I am an eater of sin. We still have a few such in Wales. They put a
piece of bread and cheese on the breast of a dead man and when the
sin-eater eats it, the sins of the dead are passed into the bread and
cheese and the soul of the dead is shrived of them. Ay, ay, but it's a
grave duty, my friend, to take upon your own soul the crime of another.
If you are free from sin yourself, you may walk through life a brave
creature; but ... I took his sins, sins, the sins of the wickedest
composer of our century, God rest his soul. And for the wicked things he
put into his symphonies I must march through life playing on this
terrible collection of instrument