lence until he came near the Hautville house. Then he
began to hear music: the soaring sweetness of a soprano voice, the
rich undertone of a bass, and the twang of stringed instruments.

When he came close to the house the low structure itself, overlaid
with snow, and with snow clinging to its gray-shingled sides like
shreds of wool, seemed to vibrate and pulse and shake, and wax fairly
sonorous with music, like an organ.

Burr Gordon stood still in the road and listened. The constituents of
the concert resolved themselves to his ear. There was a wonderful
soprano, a tenor, a bass, one sweet boy's voice, a bass-viol, and a
violin. They were practising a fugue. The soprano rang out like the
invitation of an angel,

"Come, my beloved, haste away,
Cut short the hours of thy delay,"

above all the others--even the shrill boy-treble. Then it followed,
with noblest and sweetest order, the bass in--

"Fly like a youthful hart or roe,
Over the hills where the spices grow."

The very breath of the spices of Arabia seemed borne into the young
man's senses by that voice. He saw in vision the blue tops of those
delectable hills where the myrtle and the cassia grew; he felt within
his limbs the ardent impulse of the hart or roe. He stood with his
head bent, listening, until the music ceased; the blue hills sank
suddenly into the land of the past, and all the spice-plants withered
away.

There was but a few minutes' interval; then there was a chorus--

"Strike the Timbrel."

Burr Gordon, listening, heard in that only the great soprano, and it
was to him like the voice of Miriam of old, summoning him to battle
and glory.

But when that music ceased he did not wait any longer nor enter the
house, but stole away silently. This time he travelled the main road,
which intersected the old one at the Hautville house. The village
lights shone before him all the way. He was half-way to the village
when he met his cousin, Lot Gordon. He knew he was coming through the
pale darkness of the night some time before he was actually in sight
by his cough. Lot Gordon had had for years a sharp cough which
afflicted him particularly when he walked abroad in night air. It
carried as far as the yelp of a dog; when Burr first heard it he
stopped short, and looked irresolutely at the thicket beside the
road. He had a half-impulse to slink in there among the snowy bushes
and hide until his cousin passed by. Then he shook his head angri