A deep contralto voice boomed in his ears.  As he had seen but a scant half-dozen persons during the afternoon on the heights, Ferval was startled from his dreams.  He turned.  Sitting on a bank of green was the girl.  Her hands were clasped and she spoke carelessly to her father, who, unharnessed from his orchestra, appeared another man.  Rapidly Ferval observed his striking front, his massive head with the long, white curls, the head of an Elijah disillusioned of his mission.  He, too, was sitting, but upright, and his arm was raised with a threatening gesture as if in his desolating anger he were about to pronounce a malediction upon the vanishing twilighted town.  Ferval moved immediately, as he did not care to be caught spying upon his queer neighbours.  He was halted by their speech.  It was English.  His surprise was so unaffected that he turned back and went up to the two and bade them good-day.  At once he saw that the girl recognized him; the father dropped his air of grandeur and put on the beggar’s mask.  What an actor! thought Ferval, at the transformation.  “Would the good gentleman please—?”

The girl plucked at her father’s arm imploringly.  With her grave, cold expression she answered the other’s salutation and fixed him with her wonderful eyes so inquiringly that Ferval began a hasty explanation.  “English was rarely spoken here ... and then the pleasure of the music!” The old man burst into scornful laughter.

“The music!” he exclaimed.  “The music!” echoed his daughter.  Ferval wished himself down in Rouen.  But he held his position.

“Yes,” he continued, “your music.  It interested me.  And now I find you speaking my own tongue.  I must confess that I am curious, that my curiosity has warrant.”  Thus was he talking to beggars as if they were his social equals.  Unconsciously the tone he adopted had been forced upon him by the bearing of his companions, above all by their accent, that of cultivated folk.  Who and what were they?  The musician no longer smiled.

“You are a music-lover, monsieur?” he asked in a marked French patois.

“I love music, and I am extremely engaged by your remarkable combination of instruments,” answered Ferval.  Baki regarded his wretched orchestra on the grass, then spoke to his daughter.

“Debora,” he said in English, and his listener wondered if it were Celtic or Scotch in its unusual intonations, “Debora, you must sing something for the gentleman.  He loves our art,”—­there was indescribable pathos in this phrase,—­“so sing something from Purcell, Brahms, or Richard Strauss.”