s falling dusk. I'll go with you to the end of the meadow."

And they went out together into the April twilight.

Ken and Felicia were just beginning to be really anxious, when Kirk
tumbled in at the living-room door, with a headlong tale of enchanted
hearthstones, ebony elephants, cinnamon toast, music that had made him
cry, and most of all, of the benevolent, mysterious presence who had
wrought all this. Phil and Ken shook their heads, suggested that some
supper would make Kirk feel better, and set a boundary limit of the
orchard and meadow fence on his peregrinations.

"But I promised him I'd come again," Kirk protested; "and I can find the
way. I _must_, because he says I can make music like that--and he's the
only person who could show me how."

Felicia extracted a more coherent story as she sat on the edge of Kirk's
bed later that evening. She came downstairs sober and strangely elated,
to electrify her brother by saying:

"Something queer has happened to Kirk. He's too excited, but he's simply
shining. And do you suppose it can possibly be true that he has music in
him? I mean _real_, extraordinary music, like--Beethoven or somebody."

But Ken roared so gleefully over the ridiculous idea of his small
brother's remotely resembling Beethoven, that Phil suddenly thought
herself very silly, and lapsed into somewhat humiliated silence.

* * * * *

It was some time before the cares of a household permitted the Sturgises
to do very much exploring. One of their first expeditions, however, had
been straight to the bay from the farm-house--a scramble through wild,
long-deserted pastures, an amazingly thick young alder grove, and
finally out on the stony, salty water's edge. Here all was silver to the
sea's rim, where the bay met wider waters; in the opposite direction it
narrowed till it was not more than a river, winding among salt flats and
sudden rocky points until it lost itself in a maze of blue among the
distant uplands. The other shore was just beginning to be tenderly
alight with April green, and Felicia caught her breath for very joy at
the faint pink of distant maple boughs and the smell of spring and the
sea. A song-sparrow dropped a sudden, clear throatful of notes, and
Kirk, too, caught the rapture of the spring and flung wide his arms in
impartial welcome.

Ken had been poking down the shore and came back now, evidently with
something to say.

"There's the queerest li