that his landlady was craning her head up from her
pillows in a vain effort to discover the tune, or to reduce it to the
known terms of short metre rhythm. His broken, irregular measures
troubled her, as did also his broken, irregular hours of work. There
were days when he rode far afield, or was seen lying on his back under
the pines by the brookside, listening to the splash of the water, the
hissing of the air through the boughs above him. After such days, his
piano was wont to sound far into the night, and Eulaly, as she slept
and waked and still heard her boarder's fingers crashing over the keys,
reproached herself bitterly.

"Them last doughnuts was too rich," she used to say to her old-fashioned
bolster, set up like a grim idol by the bedside; "and the poor feller
can't sleep. I mustn't put so much shortenin' in the next ones. My, but
that was an awful scrooch! I wish he'd shut his windows a little mite
tighter, and not pester the whole neighborhood."

This state of things had endured for two weeks, and the symphonic poem
was progressing as well as its composer had any reason to expect. Already
it was bidding fair to rival the _Alan Overture_ and Mr. Barrett began
to carry his nose tilted at an angle higher than ever, as if in
imagination he already scented the fresh laurels in store for him. Pride
goeth before destruction. A long day under the pines resulted not in
inspiration, but in an uninspiring cold in his head; his temper suffered
together with his nose, and Eulaly Sykes, below stairs, chafed her hands
together at the sounds of musical and moral discord which floated down
upon her ears. All the morning long, he smote his brows and his piano by
turns. The new _motif_ he was seeking, refused to be found.

Later, fortified by Eulaly's fried chicken and rhubarb pie, he tried it
again, invitingly playing over the preceding _motif_ in every possible
key and tempo. It was of no use. He slammed down the top of his piano,
tore across a half-finished page, caught up his cap, mounted his bicycle
and rushed away up the road, quite regardless of the clouds lying low in
the western sky.

Fifteen miles of scorching over country roads sufficed to bring him to a
calmer mood, and he turned his wheel towards the Sykes homestead once
more. The _motif_ was still as far beyond his grasp as ever; but there
were other things in life besides elusive _motifs_. The increasing
blackness above his head was one of them; his hunger wa