Elnora lifted the violin and began to play.  She wore a school dress of green gingham, with the sleeves rolled to the elbows.  She seemed a part of the setting all around her.  Her head shone like a small dark sun, and her face never had seemed so rose-flushed and fair.  From the instant she drew the bow, her lips parted and her eyes turned toward something far away in the swamp, and never did she give more of that impression of feeling for her notes and repeating something audible only to her.  Philip was too close to get the best effect.  He arose and stepped back several yards, leaning against a large tree, looking and listening intently.

As he changed positions he saw that Mrs. Comstock had followed them, and was standing on the trail, where she could not have helped hearing everything Elnora had said.

So to Philip before her and the mother watching on the trail, Elnora played the Song of the Limberlost.  It seemed as if the swamp hushed all its other voices and spoke only through her dancing bow.  The mother out on the trail had heard it all, once before from the girl, many times from her father.  To the man it was a revelation.  He stood so stunned he forgot Mrs. Comstock.  He tried to realize what a city audience would say to that music, from such a player, with a similar background, and he could not imagine.

He was wondering what he dared say, how much he might express, when the last note fell and the girl laid the violin in the case, closed the door, locked it and hid the key in the rotting wood at the end of a log.  Then she came to him.  Philip stood looking at her curiously.

“I wonder,” he said, “what people would say to that?”

“I played that in public once,” said Elnora.  “I think they liked it, fairly well.  I had a note yesterday offering me the leadership of the high school orchestra in Onabasha.  I can take it as well as not.  None of my talks to the grades come the first thing in the morning.  I can play a few minutes in the orchestra and reach the rooms in plenty of time.  It will be more work that I love, and like finding the money.  I would gladly play for nothing, merely to be able to express myself.”

“With some people it makes a regular battlefield of the human heart—­this struggle for self-expression,” said Philip.  “You are going to do beautiful work in the world, and do it well.  When I realize that your violin belonged to your father, that he played it before you were born, and it no doubt affected your mother strongly, and then couple with that the years you have roamed these fields and swamps finding in nature all you had to lavish your heart upon, I can see how you evolved.  I understand what you mean by self-expression.  I know something of what you have to express.  The world never so wanted your message as it does now.  It is hungry for the things you know.  I can see easily how your position came to you.  What you have to give is taught in no college, and I am not sure but you would