“Oh, please!” begged Kirk, his plea becoming audible. “Really it’s a nice thing.  I know Ken makes fun of it, but I have learned a lot from it, haven’t I?  Please, Maestro!”

“Very well, naughty one,” said the musician; “if your mother will forgive us.”

He bowed to her, and then moved with Kirk into the unlit part of the room where the little organ stood.  With a smile of tender amusement, he sat down at the odd little thing and ran his fingers up and down the short, yellowed keyboard.  Then, with Kirk lost in a dream of rapt worship and listening ecstasy beside him, he began to play.  And his touch made of the little worn melodeon a singing instrument, glorified beyond its own powers by the music he played.

The dimly firelit room swam with the exquisite echo of the melody.  Ken and Martin sat quiet in their corner.  Felicia gazed at the dear people in the home she had made:  at Ken, who had made it with her—­dear old Ken, the defender of his kindred; at Kirk, for whom they had kept the joy of living alight; at the Maestro, the beautiful spirit of the place; at her mother, given back to them at last.  Mrs. Sturgis looked wonderingly at her children in the firelight, but most of all at Kirk, whose face was lighted, as he leaned beside the Maestro, with a radiance she had never before seen there.

And without, the silver shape of a waning moon climbed between the black, sighing boughs of the laden orchard, and stood above the broad, gray roof of Applegate Farm.