aught else but tempt the foolish to their folly, the wicked to their
iniquity?

Mary! Mary! How lovely she was, in the faint gleams of light that
fell about her, there in the dim old attic! He felt her beauty,
almost, more than he saw it. And all this year, while he had thought
her growing in grace, silently, indeed, but he hoped truly, she had
been hankering for the forbidden thing, had been planning deceit in her
heart, and had led away the innocent child to follow unrighteousness
with her. He would go back, and do what he should have done a year
ago,--what he would have done, had he not yielded to the foolish talk
of a foolish woman. He would go back, and burn the fiddle, and silence
forever that sweet, insidious music, with its wicked murmurs that stole
into a man's heart--even a man's, and one who knew the evil, and
abhorred it. The smoke of it once gone up to heaven, there would be an
end. He should have his wife again, his own, and nothing should come
between them more. Yes, he would go back, in a little while, as soon
as those sounds had died away from his ears. What was the song she
sung there?

"'Tis long and long I have loved thee!
I'll ne'er forget thee more."

She would forget it, though, surely, surely, when it was gone, breathed
out in flame and ashes: when he could say to her, "There is no more any
such thing in my house and yours, Mary, Mary."

How tenderly he would tell her, though! It would hurt, yes! but not so
much as her look would hurt him when he told her. Ah, she loved the
wooden thing best! He was dumb, and it spoke to her in a thousand