oot over the window-sill and straddled
it.

His mother had told him over and over how his master would give him to
the big mastiff if he ever found him 'meddling.' Samson had got too near
the mastiff's kennel once, and had felt his terrible breath in his face.
He thought about that, but he pulled in his other foot.

Through the dark he found his way to the Thing, to its mouth. He touched
it softly, and it answered softly, kindly. He shivered and stood
still. Then he began to feel it all over, ran his finger-tips along the
slippery sides, embraced the carved legs, tried to get some conception
of its shape and size, of the space it occupied in primeval night. It
was cold and hard, and like nothing else in his black universe. He went
back to its mouth, began at one end of the keyboard and felt his way
down into the mellow thunder, as far as he could go. He seemed to know
that it must be done with the fingers, not with the fists or the feet.
He approached this highly artificial instrument through a mere instinct,
and coupled himself to it, as if he knew it was to piece him out and
make a whole creature of him. After he had tried over all the sounds,
he began to finger out passages from things Miss Nellie had been
practising, passages that were already his, that lay under the bone of
his pinched, conical little skull, definite as animal desires.

The door opened; Miss Nellie and her music-master stood behind it, but
blind Samson, who was so sensitive to presences, did not know they were
there. He was feeling out the pattern that lay all ready-made on the
big and little keys. When he paused for a moment, because the sound was
wrong and he wanted another, Miss Nellie spoke softly. He whirled about
in a spasm of terror, leaped forward in the dark, struck his head on the
open window, and fell screaming and bleeding to the floor. He had what
his mother called a fit. The doctor came and gave him opium.

When Samson was well again, his young mistress led him back to the
piano. Several teachers experimented with him. They found he had
absolute pitch, and a remarkable memory. As a very young child he could
repeat, after a fashion, any composition that was played for him. No
matter how many wrong notes he struck, he never lost the intention of
a passage, he brought the substance of it across by irregular and
astonishing means. He wore his teachers out. He could never learn like
other people, never acquired any finish. He was always