being intruded on by questions.

"Not pain; it gives me a horrible, hollow feeling in my inside," he
admitted grudgingly, "just under the belt."

After a moment he added, his dark eyes fixed angrily on the violin, "I
hate violins; they are dreadful things. M. Chalumeau had one. I broke
it."

The blind man laughed gratingly. "Because it made such a horrible
noise?"

"Yes."

Another pause, and then the man's expression of vacant malice turned to
one pitiful to see, one of indistinct yearning. "Give it to me," he
muttered, "they say I am half mad, and perhaps I am, but--I think I
could play once----" The yellow dog snapped at a fly, and his master
turned towards him, adding, "Before your time, Papillon, long before."

The bow touched the strings once or twice gently and ineffectively, and
then, his lips twitching, his eyelids as much closed as the scars on
their lids allowed them to be, he began to play.

It was the playing of one who had forgotten nearly everything of his
art, but it was sweet and true and strangely touching. To the boy it was
a miracle. He listened with the muscles of his face drawn tight in an
effort at self-control unusual in such a child, his square, brown hands
digging convulsively into the dry earth under the grass beside him. And
as the shadows of the trees crept over the road, and the oppressive heat