never see it changed or different. We can always remember it just
as we see it now, and it will be like this for ever for us."

"I'm going to sketch it," said Uncle Blair.

While he sketched it the Story Girl and I sat on the banks of the
brook and she told me the story of the Sighing Reed. It was a
very simple little story, that of the slender brown reed which
grew by the forest pool and always was sad and sighing because it
could not utter music like the brook and the birds and the winds.
All the bright, beautiful things around it mocked it and laughed
at it for its folly. Who would ever look for music in it, a
plain, brown, unbeautiful thing? But one day a youth came through
the wood; he was as beautiful as the spring; he cut the brown reed
and fashioned it according to his liking; and then he put it to
his lips and breathed on it; and, oh, the music that floated
through the forest! It was so entrancing that everything--brooks
and birds and winds--grew silent to listen to it. Never had
anything so lovely been heard; it was the music that had for so
long been shut up in the soul of the sighing reed and was set free
at last through its pain and suffering.

I had heard the Story Girl tell many a more dramatic tale; but
that one stands out for me in memory above them all, partly,
perhaps, because of the spot in which she told it, partly because
it was the last one I was to hear her tell for many years--the
last one she was ever to tell me on the golden road.

When Uncle Blair had finished his sketch the shafts of sunshine
were turning crimson and growing more and more remote; the early