soul of all the old laughter and song and tears and gladness and
sobs the orchard had ever known in the lost years; and besides
all this, there was in it a pitiful, plaintive cry as of some
imprisoned thing calling for freedom and utterance.

At first Eric listened as a man spellbound, mutely and
motionlessly, lost in wonderment. Then a very natural curiosity
overcame him. Who in Lindsay could play a violin like that? And
who was playing so here, in this deserted old orchard, of all
places in the world?

He rose and walked up the long white avenue, going as slowly and
silently as possible, for he did not wish to interrupt the
player. When he reached the open space of the garden he stopped
short in new amazement and was again tempted into thinking he
must certainly be dreaming.

Under the big branching white lilac tree was an old, sagging,
wooden bench; and on this bench a girl was sitting, playing on an
old brown violin. Her eyes were on the faraway horizon and she
did not see Eric. For a few moments he stood there and looked at
her. The pictures she made photographed itself on his vision to
the finest detail, never to be blotted from his book of
remembrance. To his latest day Eric Marshall will be able to
recall vividly that scene as he saw it then--the velvet darkness
of the spruce woods, the overarching sky of soft brilliance, the
swaying lilac blossoms, and amid it all the girl on the old bench
with the violin under her chin.

He had, in his twenty-four years of life, met hundreds of pretty