in earnest, for it is not in her angelic nature to be really unkind; and what have I done?  Eve, dear, such a change from what she was at Font Abbey, and that happy evening when she came and drank tea with us, and lighted our little garden up, and won your heart, that was always a little set against her.  Now it is so different that I sit and ask myself whether all that is not a dream.  Can anyone change so in one short month?  I could not.  But who knows? perhaps I do her wrong.  You know I never could read her at home without your help, and, dear Eve, I miss you now from my side most sadly.  Without you I seem to be adrift, without rudder or compass.”

Then, as he could not sleep, he dressed himself, and went out at four o’clock in the morning.  He roamed about with a heavy heart; at last he bethought him of his fiddle.  Since Lucy’s departure from Font Abbey this had been a great solace to him.  It was at once a depository and vent to him; he poured out his heart to it and by it; sometimes he would fancy, while he played, that he was describing the beauties of her mind and person; at others, regretting the sad fate that separated him from her; or, hope reviving, would see her near him, and be telling her how he loved her; and, so great an inspirer is love, he had invented more than one clear melody during the last month, he who up to that time had been content to render the thoughts of others, like most fiddlers and composers.

So he said to himself, “I had better not play in the house, or I shall wake them out of their first sleep.”

He brought out his violin, got among some trees near the stable-yard, and tried to soothe his sorrowful heart.  He played sadly, sweetly and dreamingly.  He bade the wooden shell tell all the world how lonely he was, only the magic shell told it so tenderly and tunefully that he soon ceased to be alone.  The first arrival was on four legs:  Pepper, a terrier with a taste for sounds.  Pepper arrived cautiously, though in a state of profound curiosity, and, being too wise to trust at once to his ears, avenue of sense by which we are all so much oftener deceived than by any other, he first smelled the musician carefully and minutely all round.  What he learned by this he and his Creator alone know, but apparently something reassuring; for, as soon as he had thoroughly snuffed his Orpheus, he took up a position exactly opposite him, sat up high on his tail, cocked his nose well into the air, and accompanied the violin with such vocal powers as Nature had bestowed on him.  Nor did the sentiment lose anything, in intensity at all events, by the vocalist.  If David’s strains were plaintive, Pepper’s were lugubrious; and what may seem extraordinary, so long as David played softly the Cerberus of the stableyard whined musically, and tolerably in tune; but when he played loud or fast poor Pepper got excited, and in his wild endeavors to equal the violin vented dismal and discordant howls at unpleasantly short intervals.  All this attracted David’s attention, and he soon found he could play upon Pepper as well as the fiddle, raising him and subduing him by turns; only, like the ocean, Pepper was not to be lulled back to his musical ripple quite so quickly as he could be lashed into howling frenzy.