to wind it up again, he heard a run in X minor, and then the hook
was caught. He pulled and pulled, and in the end he brought up five
fingers with wool at the fingertips, and the bones cracked like
the bones of a skeleton. Then he was frightened and flung his catch
back into the sea, although he knew quite well what it was.

In the dog days, when the water is warm and all the fish retire to
the greater depths to enjoy the coolness, the music ceased. But on
a moonlit night in August, the summer guests held a regatta. The
master of the mine and his wife were present. They sat in a white
boat and were slowly rowed about by their sons. And as their boat
was gliding over the black water, the surface of which was like
silver and gold in the moonlight, they heard a sound of music just
below their boat.

"Ha ha!" laughed the master of the mine, "listen to our old piano!
Ha ha!"

But he was silent when he saw that his wife hung her head, in the
way pelicans do in pictures; it looked as if she wanted to bite
her own neck and hide her face.

The old piano and its long history had awakened memories in her of
the first dining-room they furnished together, the first of their
children which had had music lessons, the boredom of the long
evenings, only to be chased away by the crashing volumes of sound
which overcame the dulness of everyday life, changed bad temper
into cheerfulness, and lent new beauty even to the old furniture
. . . . But that is a story which belongs elsewhere.