. Growing bolder as he went
on, he at last filled the quiet night with the strenuous sweep of his
chant. Surprised at his own fervor, he paused for a moment, listening,
half frightened, half ashamed of his outbreak. But there was only the
trilling of the night wind in the leaves, or the far-off yelp of a
coyote.

For a moment he thought he heard the metallic twang of a stringed
instrument in the Mission garden beyond his own, and remembered his
contiguity to the church with a stir of defiance. But he was relieved,
nevertheless. His pent-up emotion had found vent, and without the
nervous excitement that had followed his old exaltation. That night he
slept better. He had found the Lord again--with Psalmody!

The next evening he chanced upon a softer hymn of the same simplicity,
but with a vein of human tenderness in its aspirations, which his more
hopeful mood gently rendered. At the conclusion of the first verse
he was, however, distinctly conscious of being followed by the same
twanging sound he had heard on the previous night, and which even his
untutored ear could recognize as an attempt to accompany him. But before
he had finished the second verse the unknown player, after an ingenious
but ineffectual essay to grasp the right chord, abandoned it with
an impatient and almost pettish flourish, and a loud bang upon the
sounding-board of the unseen instrument. Masterton finished it alone.

With his curiosity excited, however, he tried to discover the locality
of the hidden player. The sound evidently came from the Mission garden;
but in his ignorance of the language he could not even interrogate
his Indian housekeeper. On the third night, however, his hymn was
uninterrupted by any sound from the former musician. A sense of
disappointment, he knew not why, came over him. The kindly overture of
the unseen player had been a relief to his loneliness. Yet he had barely
concluded the hymn when the familiar sound again struck his ears. But
this time the musician played boldly, confidently, and with a singular
skill on the instrument.

The brilliant prelude over, to his entire surprise and some confusion,
a soprano voice, high, childish, but infinitely quaint and fascinating,
was mischievously uplifted. But alas! even to his ears, ignorant of
the language, it was very clearly a song of levity and wantonness,
of freedom and license, of coquetry and incitement! Yet such was its
fascination that he fancied it was reclaimed by t