r, if you'll excuse my
mentioning it."

For a moment a faint, kindly smile chased away the look of intense
weariness in Garth's eyes.

"You transparent old fool, Judson!" he said indulgently. "You're like
an old hen clucking round. Very well, make me a whisky, if you will, and
give me one of those superlative sandwiches."

Judson waited on him contentedly.

"Anything more to-night, sir? Shall I close the window?" with a gesture
towards the wide-open window near which his master sat.

Garth shook his head, and, when at last the manservant had reluctantly
taken his departure, he remained for a long time sitting very still,
staring out across the moon-washed garden.

Presently he stirred restlessly. Glancing round the room, his eyes fell
on his violin, lying upon the table with the bow beside it just as he
had laid it down that morning after he had been improvising, in a fit
of mad spirits, some variations on the theme of Mendelssohn's Wedding
March.

He took up the instrument and struck a few desultory chords. Then,
tucking it more closely beneath his chin, he began to play--a broken,
fitful melody of haunting sadness, tormented by despairing chords, swept
hither and thither by rushing minor cadences--the very spirit of pain
itself, wandering, ghost-like, in desert places.

Upstairs Judson turned heavily in his bed.

"Just hark to 'im, Maria," he muttered uneasily. "He fair makes my flesh
creep with that doggoned fiddle of his. 'Tis like a child crying in the
dark. I wish he'd stop."

But the sad strains still went on, rising and falling, while Garth paced
back and forth the length of the room and the candles flickered palely
in the moonlight that poured in through the open window.

Suddenly, across the lawn a figure flitted, noiseless as a shadow. It
paused once, as though listening, then glided forward again, slowly
drawing nearer and nearer until at last it halted on the threshold of
the room.

Garth, for the moment standing with his back towards the window,
continued playing, oblivious of the quiet listener. Then, all at once,
the feeling that he was no longer alone, that some one was sharing with
him the solitude of the night, invaded his consciousness. He turned
swiftly, and as his glance fell upon the silent figure standing at
the open window, he slowly drew his violin from beneath his chin and
remained staring at the apparition as though transfixed.

It was a woman who had thus intruded on his pri