er
prosperity than she had ever been in her adversity; for some plants only
blossom in sunshine. What wonder if to her the music and the musician
became one? It is sometimes a dangerous thing to fuse the man and his
talents in this way; but it did no harm here, for Anthony Croft was his
music, and the music was Anthony Croft. When he played on his violin,
it was as if the miracle of its fashioning were again enacted; as if the
bird on the quivering bough, the mellow sunshine streaming through the
lattice of green leaves, the tinkle of the woodland stream, spoke in
every tone; and more than this, the hearth-glow in whose light the
patient hands had worked, the breath of the soul bending itself in
passionate prayer for perfection, these, too, seemed to have wrought
their blessed influence on the willing strings until the tone was laden
with spiritual harmony. One might indeed have sung of this little red
violin--that looked to Lyddy, in the sunset glow, as if it were veneered
with rubies--all that Shelley sang of another perfect instrument:--

"The artist who this viol wrought
To echo all harmonious thought,
Fell'd a tree, while on the steep
The woods were in their winter sleep,
Rock'd in that repose divine
Of the wind-swept Apennine;
And dreaming, some of Autumn past,
And some of Spring approaching fast,
And some of April buds and showers,
And some of songs in July bowers,
And all of love; and so this tree--
O that such our death may be!--
Died in sleep, and felt no pain,
To live in happier form again."

The viol "whispers in enamoured tone:"--

"Sweet oracles of woods and dells,
And summer windy ill sylvan cells;..
The clearest echoes of the hills,
The softest notes of falling rills,
The melodies of birds and bees,
The murmuring of summer seas,
And pattering rain, and breathing dew,
And airs of evening; all it knew....
--All this it knows, but will not tell
To those who cannot question well
The spirit that inhabits it;...
But, sweetly as its answers will
Flatter hands of perfect skill,
It keeps its highest, holiest tone
For one beloved Friend alone."

Lyddy heard the violin and the man's voice as he talked to the
child,--heard them night after night; and when she went home to the
little brown house to light the fire on the hearth and let down the warm
red c