s kind of thought you didn't much like it," said the other,
puzzled. "Seemed to me you always sort of wished you hadn't settled
here."

A little further on they passed Mr. Fisbee. He was walking into the
village with his head thrown back, a strange thing for him. They gave
him a friendly greeting and passed on.

"Well, it beats me!" observed Lige, when the old man was out of hearing.
"He's be'n there to supper again. He was there all day yesterday, and
with 'em at the lecture, and at the deepo day before and he looks like
another man, and dressed up--for him--to beat thunder----What do you
expect makes him so thick out there all of a sudden?"

"I hadn't thought about it. The judge and he have been friends a good
while, haven't they?"

"Yes, three or four years; but not like this. It beats _me_! He's all
upset over Miss Sherwood, I think. Old enough to be her grandfather,
too, the old----"

His companion stopped him, dropping a hand on his shoulder.

"Listen!"

They were at the corner of the Briscoe picket fence, and a sound lilted
through the stillness--a touch on the keys that Harkless knew. "Listen,"
he whispered.

It was the "Moonlight Sonata" that Helen was playing. "It's a pretty
piece," observed Lige after a time. John could have choked him, but he
answered: "Yes, it is seraphic."

"Who made it up?" pursued Mr. Willetts.

"Beethoven."

"Foreigner, I expect. Yet in some way or another makes me think of
fishing down on the Wabash bend in Vigo, and camping out nights like
this; it's a mighty pretty country around there--especially at night."

The sonata was finished, and then she sang--sang the "Angel's Serenade."
As the soft soprano lifted and fell in the modulations of that song
there was in its timbre, apart from the pure, amber music of it, a
questing, seeking pathos, and Willetts felt the hand on his shoulder
tighten and then relax; and, as the song ended, he saw that his
companion's eyes were shining and moist.

CHAPTER IX. NIGHT: IT IS BAD LUCK TO SING BEFORE BREAKFAST

There was a lace of faint mists along the creek and beyond, when John
and Helen reached their bench (of course they went back there), and
broken roundelays were croaking from a bayou up the stream, where rakish
frogs held carnival in resentment of the lonesomeness. The air was still
and close. Hundreds of fire-flies coquetted with the darkness amongst
the trees across the water, glinting from unexpected spots, shading
t