front room.
While its owner was tuning it, I put up a couple of rude box bedsteads
in the attic, and filled them with clean hay. The cooking-stove was put
up in the rear apartment, and the whole building looked as though it
had never been disturbed, for everything had been placed as it was on
the island. I had the pleasure of conducting Ella to her new home,
where we passed a very pleasant evening.

CHAPTER XXIV.

IN WHICH PHIL AND HIS FRIENDS EXAMINE THE CONTENTS OF THE CHEST.

Lieutenants Pope and Jackson were of the pleasant party in the
reconstructed house. Both of them were good singers, and I experienced
a new sensation. Ella was able to sit up all day now, and she and her
mother sang. To the accompaniment of the grand piano, the party sang
what they called old and familiar tunes. I had never heard anything
which could be called singing before, and I was more delighted than I
can express. The instrument, highly as I had appreciated it before,
seemed to have a double power and a double melody.

The tunes were Old Hundred, Peterboro', Hamburg, and others like them,
which have since become familiar to me. They raised my soul from earth
to heaven, and inspired me with new love and new hope. I had read some
of the hymns they sang; but their musical interpretation gave them a
purer and loftier sentiment than their words could convey. Ella sang a
little song alone; and, as I listened to her sweet voice, I could
hardly restrain my tears, the melody was so new and strange, and withal
so heavenly. What would earth be if men and women could not sing!

It was a gloomy moment to me when the party separated. It was like
coming down from heaven to earth when the music ceased, and I heard
only the commonplace sounds which were familiar to me. I left the house
with the two officers; but it was still early in the evening, and I
invited Mr. Jackson, to whom I had become much attached, to go into the
Castle with me. He had taken an interest in me and in my affairs, and I
wanted to talk with him about the great world I had never seen. After
the raptures of the evening, I could not help shuddering as I thought
of the time when the Gracewoods would return to their old home in St.
Louis. The thought of a separation was intolerable, and I resolved to
abandon Field and Forest when they decided to go.

"Is that the chest of which you spoke, Phil?" said Mr. Jackson, as we
entered the Castle, where a bright fire of pitch-wood wa