erence over the accentuation
of a note in an air from Bizet's _I Pescatori di Perle_ that my
shipmate strode over the piano stool.

The old professional's face was amusing to watch. Good-natured contempt
for amateur theory was very plainly written on it at first. That gave
way to surprise and wonder; and then these merged into undiluted
admiration.

Haigh had given his version of the disputed passage, and then saying,
"This is rather a fine bit too," had played through the Moor's fierce
love song; after which, without any words being spoken, he verged off
into other melody which we could appreciate even though we failed to
recognize its origin. It was all new to us, and after a while we began
to see that the player was his own composer.

He peered round from time to time, glancing over his shoulder at our
faces, and once stopped to ask if we were bored.

"No, go on," said Paoli. "I never heard music like that before. It is
new. I do not say whether I like it. I cannot understand it all as yet,
I who can comprehend all that even Wagner wrote. But it is wonderful.
Continue.--No, nothing fresh, or my ears will be dazed with surfeit.
Play again that--that piece, that study, I know not what you call it,
which ran somehow thus"--the Italian hummed some broken snatches.--"It
seemed to show me a procession of damned spirits scrambling down the
mountains to hell, with troops of little devils blackmailing them on
the road. I know not how you call the thing, and like enough I have
totally missed its motive; but there is something about it that holds
me, fascinates me, and I would hear it again that I may understand."

Haigh grinned and complied, and then he played us more of his own
stuff, the most _outre_ that human ears had ever listened to, and
we marvelled still further. But having by this time fallen in with his
vein, we both of us could appreciate the luxuries he was pouring out.

"Signor," said Paoli enthusiastically, when it was over, "if you chose,
you could found a new school of music."

"And call it the Vagabond School, eh?"

"Your airs are wild and weird, I own, but, signor, there is melody in
every note of them."

Haigh shrugged his shoulders. "Such melody, _maestro mio,_ as only
the initiated can appreciate. You have been a wanderer, _maestro_,
and so has Cospatric; therefore you understand. But the steady,
industrious stay-at-homes, the people who think that they know what
music really is, and what its li