d the lovely strain rose upon the air pure and unmingled with
another sound. Rachel ceased her emphatic noddings and her mincing
whisper, and sat with her hands folded in her lap to listen. Ezra, with
his gaunt hands folded behind him, stood with his habitual stoop more
marked than common, and stared at the grass at his feet. Ruth, from her
old station by the apple-tree, looked from one to the other. She had
heard Sennacherib's story from her father, and her heart was predisposed
to read a romance here, little as either of the actors in that obscure
drama of so many years ago looked like the figures of a romance now.
They had been lovers before she was born, and had quarrelled somehow,
and had each lived single. And now, when they had met after this great
lapse of years, the gray old man trembled, and the wrinkled old woman
turned her back upon him. The music was not without its share in
the girl's emotion. And there was Reuben, with manly head and great
shoulders, with strength and masculine grace in every line of him, to
her fancy, drawing the loveliest music from the long-silent violin, and
staring up at the evening sky as he played. Ah! if Reuben and she should
quarrel and part!

But Reuben had never spoken a word, and the girl, catching herself at
this romantic exercise, blushed for shame, and for one swift second
hid her face in her hands. Then with a sudden pretence of perfect
self-possession, such as only a woman could achieve on such short
notice, she glanced with an admirably casual air about her to see that
the gesture had not been observed. Nobody looked at her. Her father and
the two brothers were watching Reuben, Ezra preserved his old attitude,
Ferdinand was fiddling with his eye-glass, and moving his hand and one
foot in time to the music, and Rachel's strangely youthful eyes were
bright with tears. As the girl looked at her a shining drop brimmed over
from each eye and dropped upon the neat mantle of black silk she wore.
The little old maid did not discover that she had been crying until
Reuben's solo was over, and then she wiped her eyes composedly and
turned to renew her conversation with Ferdinand.

"Ah!" said Fuller, expelling a great sigh when Reuben laid down his bow
upon the table, "theer's a tone! That's a noble instrument, Mr. Gold."

"She'll be the better for being played upon a little," said Ezra,
mildly.

"Well, thee seest," said Isaiah, with a look of contemplation,
"her's been a leadin