ooking at her
across that great gulf of original conceptions of things which love
itself can never quite bridge. Tears came into his keen black eyes,
and his voice was hoarse when he spoke again. "Well, Madelon," said
David Hautville, with a firmer laying on of his heavy hand on his
daughter's shoulder, "ye've been a good daughter and sister, and
we're all of us glad you've got over this last foolishness, and we
don't lay it up against ye, and--we'll all miss ye when ye're gone."

Madelon moved quietly away from her father's roughly tender hand. "I
thought maybe the Widow Scoville would be willing to come here and
live," said she. "She's a good cook and a good housekeeper. I'm going
to see her about it."

"Well, we'll see," said David Hautville, huskily--"we'll see." He
turned away, and looked irresolutely at the shelf whereon his pipe
lay, at the wedding-silk on the chair, at his great boots in the
corner at the outer door, then at his bass-viol leaning in the corner
which the dresser formed against the wall, and a light of decision
flashed into his eyes.

He drew his old arm-chair nearer the fire, carried the viol over to
it, set it between his knees, flung an arm around its neck and began
to play. His great chest heaved tenderly over it; its sweetly
sonorous voice spoke to his soul. Here was the friend who vexed David
Hautville with no problems of character or sex, but filled his simple
understanding without appeal. These chords in which the viol spoke
were from the foundations of things, like the spring-time and the
harvest and the frosts; they abided eternally through all the vain
speculations of life, and sounded above the grave. No imagination of
a great artist had David Hautville, but his music was to him like his
woodcraft. He traced out the chords and the harmonies with the same
fervor that he followed the course of a stream or climbed a
mountain-path. A great player was he, although the power of creation
was not in him, for he fingered his viol with the ardor of a soul set
in its favorite way of all others. As David Hautville played his
great resonant viol he forgot all about his own perplexity and his
daughter's love-troubles; but she, listening as she worked, did not
forget.

Madelon, swept around with these sweet waves of sounds, never once
had her memory of her own misery submerged. A strange double
consciousness she had, as she listened, of her senses and her soul.
All her nerves lapsed involuntar