rowing in grace, silently, indeed, but he hoped truly, she had
been hankering for the forbidden thing, had been planning deceit in her
heart, and had led away the innocent child to follow unrighteousness
with her. He would go back, and do what he should have done a year
ago,--what he would have done, had he not yielded to the foolish talk
of a foolish woman. He would go back, and burn the fiddle, and silence
forever that sweet, insidious music, with its wicked murmurs that stole
into a man's heart--even a man's, and one who knew the evil, and
abhorred it. The smoke of it once gone up to heaven, there would be an
end. He should have his wife again, his own, and nothing should come
between them more. Yes, he would go back, in a little while, as soon
as those sounds had died away from his ears. What was the song she
sung there?

"'Tis long and long I have loved thee!
I'll ne'er forget thee more."

She would forget it, though, surely, surely, when it was gone, breathed
out in flame and ashes: when he could say to her, "There is no more any
such thing in my house and yours, Mary, Mary."

How tenderly he would tell her, though! It would hurt, yes! but not so
much as her look would hurt him when he told her. Ah, she loved the
wooden thing best! He was dumb, and it spoke to her in a thousand
tones! Even he had understood some of them. There was one note that
was like his mother's voice when she lifted it up in the hymn she loved
best,--his gentle mother, dead so long, so long ago. She--why, she
loved music; he had forgotten that. But only psalms, only godly hymns,
never anything else.

What devil whispered in his ear, "She never heard anything else. She
would have loved this too, this too, if she had had the chance, if she
had heard Mary play!" He put his hands to his ears, and almost ran on.
Where was he going? He did not ask, did not think. He only knew that
it was a relief to be walking, to get farther and farther away from
what he loved and fain would cherish, from what he hated and would fain
destroy.

The grass grew long and rank under his feet; he stumbled, and paused
for a moment, out of breath, to look about him. He was in the old
burying-ground, the grey stones rearing their heads to peer at him as
he hurried on. Ah, there was one stone here that belonged to him. He
had not been in the place since he was a child; he cared nothing about
the dead of long ago: but now the memory of it all ca