“Are you fond of music here?” asked Arnold, as he pointed to the old many-legged piano that stood at one side of the room.

“My girls play a little,” answered the old man; “they have gone up to town this afternoon to get some tickets to that famous man’s concert.  They play a little, but they complain that the old piano is out of tune.”

“That I could help,” said Arnold, as he took his tuning-key out of his pocket.

“Oh, you are one of those tuners,” said the old man, relieved; “my girls have been looking out for one.”

Arnold seated himself at the piano.  The old people went in and out of the room, but presently came back when he began to play.  They sat in silent listening.  “When Arnold came to a pause, the old man said,—­

“That takes me back to the old meeting-house.  Do you remember, wife, when I led in Dedham?”

“I,” said the mother, “was thinking of that Ordination-ball, and of ’Money Musk’ and ‘Hull’s Victory.’”

“That is strange enough,” said the old man, “that it should sound like psalm-tunes and country-dances.”

“It takes us back to our youth; that is it,” she answered.

And Arnold went on.  Soft home-strains came from the piano, and the two old people sank into their chairs in happy musing.  The twilight was growing dimmer, the strains grew more soft and subdued, dying through gentle shades into silence.  There had been a little rustling sound in the doorway.  Arnold turned, when he had done, and saw a white figure standing there, in listening attitude, the head half bent, the hands clasped over a straw hat whose ribbons touched the ground.  Behind her was the trellis of the porch, with its sweet-brier hanging over it.  It was Laura, in the very frame in which his imagination had pictured her.

“Have the girls got home?” asked the old man, rousing himself, and going towards the door.—­“Come in, girls.  I half think we have got your great musician here.  At any rate, he can work some magic, and has pulled out of the old piano all the music ever your mother and I have listened to all our life long.—­My girls could not have hired me,” he continued to Arnold, “to go to one of your new-fangled concerts; but whether it is because the little piano is so old, or because you know all that old music, you have brought it all back as though the world were beginning again.—­We must not let him go from here to-night,” he said to his wife and children.  And when he found that Laura had met the musician in New York, his urgencies upon Arnold to stay were peremptory and unanswerable.

As Laura’s younger sister, Clara, closed her eyes that night, she said,—­

“Mamma and papa think his music sounded of home and old times.  How did it sound to you, Laura?”

Laura put her hands over her closed eyes in the dark, and said, dreamily,—­“It sounded to me like love-songs, sung by such a tender voice, out in the woods, somewhere, where there were pine-trees and a brook.”