about the shocked, amazed ears of Simeon Holly and his wife.

For a time neither the man nor the woman could speak. There was
nothing in their humdrum, habit-smoothed tilling of the soil and
washing of pots and pans to prepare them for a scene like this--a
moonlit barn, a strange dead man, and that dead man's son
babbling of brooks and squirrels, and playing jigs on a fiddle
for a dirge. At last, however, Simeon found his voice.

"Boy, boy, stop that!" he thundered. "Are you mad--clean mad? Go
into the house, I say!" And the boy, dazed but obedient, put up
his violin, and followed the woman, who, with tear-blinded eyes,
was leading the way down the stairs.

Mrs. Holly was frightened, but she was also strangely moved. From
the long ago the sound of another violin had come to her--a
violin, too, played by a boy's hands. But of this, all this, Mrs.
Holly did not like to think.

In the kitchen now she turned and faced her young guest.

"Are you hungry, little boy?"

David hesitated; he had not forgotten the woman, the milk, and
the gold-piece.

"Are you hungry--dear?" stammered Mrs. Holly again; and this time
David's clamorous stomach forced a "yes" from his unwilling lips;
which sent Mrs. Holly at once into the pantry for bread and milk
and a heaped-up plate of doughnuts such as David had never seen