“Jove!” he murmured, as the last note died away, “he’s a wonder.  He must be older than he looks.  How he loves it!  He’s forgotten that he doesn’t know where he’s to sleep to-night—­but, by all that’s fair, we know, eh?”

Ellen smiled, with a look of assent.  Her own heart was warmly touched.  There was a small bedroom upstairs, plainly but comfortably furnished, which was often used for impecunious patients who needed to remain under observation for a day or two.  It was at the service of any chance guest, and the chance guest was surely with them to-night.  There was no place in the village to which such a vagrant as this might be sent, except the jail, and the jail, for a musician of such quality, was unthinkable.  And in the night and storm one would not turn a dog outdoors to hunt for shelter—­at least not Red Pepper Burns nor Ellen Burns, his wife.

As if he could not stop, now that he had found ears to listen, the young Hungarian played on.  More and more profoundly did his music move him, until it seemed as if he had become the very spirit of the instrument which sung and vibrated under his thin fingers.

“My word, Len, this is too good to keep all to ourselves.  Let’s have the Macauleys and Chesters over.  Then we’ll have an excuse for paying the chap a good sum for his work—­and somehow I feel that we need an excuse for such a gentleman as he is.”

“That’s just the thing.  I’ll ask them.”

She was on her way to the telephone when her husband suddenly called after her, “Wait a minute, Len.”  She turned back, to see the musician, his bow faltering, suddenly lower his violin and lean against his patron, who had leaped to his support.  A minute later Burns had him stretched upon the blue couch, and had laid his fingers on the bony wrist.

“Hang me for a simpleton, to feed him like that he’s probably not tasted solid food for days.  The reaction is too much, of course.  He’s been playing on his nerve for the last ten minutes, and I, like an idiot, thought it was his emotional temperament.”

He ran out of the room and returned with a wine glass filled with liquid, which he administered, his arm under the ragged shoulders.  Then he patted the wasted cheek, gone suddenly white except where the excited colour still showed in faint patches.

“You’ll be all right, son,” he said, smiling down into the frightened eyes, and his tone if not his words seemed to carry reassurance, for the eyes closed with a weary flutter and the gripping fingers relaxed.

“He’s completely done,” Burns said pityingly.  He took one hand in his own and held it in his warm grasp, at which the white lids unclosed again, and the sensitive lips tried to smile.

“I’d no business to let him play so long—­I might have known.  Poor boy, he’s starved for other things than food.  Do you suppose anybody’s held his hand like this since he left the old country?  He thought he’d find wealth and fame in the new one—­and this is what he found!”