ith its stars, the earth
with its fruits, show me that God has passed." Again, in reply to the
same question, the reply of the same Arab sprang to his lips--"Does the
Morning want a Light to see it by?"

As he stood with his flute--his fingers now and then caressingly rising
and falling upon its little caverns, his mind travelled far to those
regions he had never seen, where his uncle traded, and explored.
Suddenly, the call he had heard in his sleep now came to him in this
waking reverie. His eyes withdrew from the tree at the window, as if
startled, and he almost called aloud in reply; but he realised where
he was. At last, raising the flute to his lips, as the eyes of Luke
Claridge closed with very trouble, he began to play.

Out in the woods of Beedon he had attuned his flute to the stir of
leaves, the murmur of streams, the song of birds, the boom and burden
of storm; and it was soft and deep as the throat of the bell-bird of
Australian wilds. Now it was mastered by the dreams he had dreamed
of the East: the desert skies, high and clear and burning, the desert
sunsets, plaintive and peaceful and unvaried--one lovely diffusion, in
which day dies without splendour and in a glow of pain. The long velvety
tread of the camel, the song of the camel-driver, the monotonous chant
of the river-man, with fingers mechanically falling on his little drum,
the cry of the eagle of the Libyan Hills, the lap of the heavy waters
of the Dead Sea down by Jericho, the battle-call of the Druses beyond
Damascus, the lonely gigantic figures at the mouth of the temple of Abou
Simbel, looking out with the eternal question to the unanswering desert,
the delicate ruins of moonlit Baalbec, with the snow mountains hovering
above, the green oases, and the deep wells where the caravans lay down
in peace--all these were pouring their influences on his mind in the
little Quaker village of Hamley where life was so bare, so grave.

The music he played was all his own, was instinctively translated from
all other influences into that which they who listened to him could
understand. Yet that sensuous beauty which the Quaker Society was so
concerned to banish from any part in their life was playing upon them
now, making the hearts of the women beat fast, thrilling them, turning
meditation into dreams, and giving the sight of the eyes far visions
of pleasure. So powerful was this influence that the shrill Elder twice
essayed to speak in protest, but was