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The Stolen Singer by Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
page 10 of 289 (03%)

"Faithfully yours,

"HERCULES THAYER."


Agatha Redmond folded the thin sheets carefully. There was a mist in
her gaze as she looked off toward the distant city lights.

"Dear old gentleman! His whole love-story, and my mother's, too,
perhaps!" Her quickened memory recalled childish impressions of a
visit to a large country house and of a solemn old man--he seemed
incredibly ancient to her--and of feeling that in some way she and her
mother were in a special relationship to the house. It was called "the
old red house," and was full of fascinating things. The ancient man
had bidden her go about and play as if it were her home, and then had
called her to him and laid open a book, leading her mind to regard its
mysteries. Greek! It seemed to her as if she had begun it there and
then. Later the mother became the teacher. She was nursed, as it
were, within sight of the windy plains of Troy and to the sound of the
Homeric hymns--and all by reason of this ancient scholar.

There was a vivid picture in her mind, gathered at some later visit, of
a soft hillside, a small white church standing under its balm-of-gilead
tree, and herself sitting by a stone in the old churchyard, listening
to the strains of a hymn which floated out from the high, narrow
windows. She remembered how, from without, she had joined in the hymn,
singing with all her small might; and suddenly the association brought
back to her a more recent event and a more beautiful strain of music.
Half in reverie, half in conscious pleasure in the exercise of a facile
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