took the path by the house, on to the edge
of the cliffs, where I could hear every note, every shade of
expression; where I could follow the story:--the Russian setting, the
summer evening, the beautiful lady, the pealing of the bells calling
the worshippers to the chapel for midnight mass; the whispered
conversations, the organ in solemn chant, the priests intoning the
service, the farewell, and, lastly, the lingering chords of the organ
fading into the deep silence of slumber.

Just as I was about to sit down, I descried the solitary, shadowy
outline of a figure seated a few yards away.

It was Jake,--poor, old, lonely, battle-scarred Jake. His head was in
his hands and he was gazing out to sea as if he were dreaming.

I walked over to him and sat by his side. His blue eyes were filled
with tears, tears that had not dimmed his eyes for years and years;
tears in the eyes of that old Klondike tough, calloused by privation
and leather-hided by hard drinking; tears, and at music which he did
not understand any more than that it was something outside of his body
altogether, outside of the material world, something that spoke only to
the soul of him.

I did not speak,--I dared not speak, for the moment was too sacred.

So we two sat thus, knowing of each other's presence, yet ignoring it,
and listening, all absorbed, entranced, almost hypnotised by the
subtleties of the most charming of all gifts, the perfect
interpretation of a work of art.

We listened on and on,--after the chilly night wind had come up from
the sea, for we did not know of its coming until the music ceased and
the light faded away from the parlour of the house behind us.

"Gee!" exclaimed Jake at last, spitting his mouthful of tobacco over
into the water and wiping his eyes with his coat sleeve, "but that dope
pulls a gink's socks off,--you bet.

"Guess, if a no-gooder like me had of heard that stuff oftener when he
was a kid, he wouldn't be such a no-gooder;--eh! George."

I followed Jake to his boat and, somewhere out of the darkness, Mike
the dog appeared and tailed off behind us.

I accompanied the old fellow to his shack, for this love of music in
him was a new phase of his temperament to me and somehow my heart went
out to him in his loneliness, in his apparent heart-hunger for
something he could hardly hope to find.

We talked together for a long time, and as we talked I noticed that
Jake made no effort to start his usual drinking b