econd cork
taking flight from the bottle followed, and then a third, while the
music went on.

There was a row of iron railings in front of the windows, and Richard
turned his back and rested it against them; for he was tired, and it was
pleasant to listen to the music and feel himself close to a party of
gentlemen just for a few minutes before he went back into the town to
find out some place where he could get a meal and bed.

All at once, after a loud passage, the band wound up with a series of
chords, leaving the principal flute-player sustaining one long note and
then dropping to the octave below, from which he started upon a series
of runs, paused, and commenced a solo full of florid passages
introductory to a delicious melody--one of those plaintive airs which,
once heard, cling evermore to the memory.

Dick was weary, faint, and in low spirits. The events of the past days
seemed to fit themselves to the strain, till his brow wrinkled up, then
grew full of knots, and he angrily muttered the word "Muff!" A few
moments later he ejaculated "Duffer!" and then twisted himself suddenly
round to look up at the open window from which, mingled with the loud
conversation and rattle of plates, the music came.

"Oh, it's murder!" muttered the lad. "The fellow ought to be kicked!"
and, as he listened, his hand went involuntarily into his breast-pocket,
pressed the button in the side of the morocco flute-case, and extracted
the little silver-keyed piccolo from where it reposed in purple velvet
beside the two pieces of his flute.

And all the while the solo was continued, the player slurring over
passages, omitting a whole bar, and seeming to be increasing his pace so
as to take the final roulades at a break-neck gallop, and get through,
somehow, without further accident.

But he did not; for, as he reached the beginning of a brilliant
arpeggio, at the top of which there was a trill and a leap down of an
octave and a half, the wind in the bellows of this human organ suddenly
gave out, a few wildly chaotic notes elicited a roar of laughter from
the table accompanied by derisive applause. This stopped as if by
magic; for, suddenly, from out there by the railing, a few long
thrilling shakes were heard, deliciously sweet and pure, followed by the
arpeggio. The effect was as if liquid music was falling from the summer
sky; and then the player ran back to the earlier part of the air, and,
amidst perfect silence from withi