he was living over again, in the melodies that he played, his
chequered past. Forms moved before him to the music, and faces,
long since dust, smiled at him, and held converse with him, as the
plaintive notes rose and fell and died away. Winds, sweetened by
their sweep over miles of ling and herbage, and spiced with the
scents of the garden-flowers that like a zone of colour encircled
him, kissed his lips, and stole therefrom his melodies, bearing
them onwards to the haunts of the wild fowl, or letting them fall
where brooklets from the hills sang their silvery songs. Along the
path by which he sat, all fringed with London-pride, the leaves
spread dappled shadows--a mosaic of nature fit for the tread of
angels or the dance of fairy sprites. Beyond the fence that
fringed the little cottage rolled great waves of upland,
shimmering in the heat of the midsummer glare--that hot breathing
of the earth when wooed too fiercely by her wanton paramour, the
sun--while the horizon discovered lines of dreamy sweep all
crowned with haze, the vestibules to other hills grander and more
distant.

As the afternoon passed its golden hours, it passed them in
companionship with the notes of old Enoch's flute. Oblivious to
the time, oblivious to the surroundings, the musician heard not an
approaching step, nor knew that a listener stood behind the garden
bushes, with ear responsive to his melodies. How long he would
have played, how long his listener would have remained undiscovered,
it is hard to say--perhaps until the dews fell and the stars
glimmered. This was not to be, however, for forth from the cottage
door came his wife, who, with voice drowning the strain of the
flute, cried: