catgut, and horsehair, the divinest music can be drawn forth by the hand of the master who knows how to use these rough implements!  Suggestive, too, is it not, my friends?—­ for if man can by his own poor skill and limited intelligence so invoke spiritual melody by material means,—­shall not God contrive some wondrous tunefulness for Himself even out of our common earthly discord? . ...  Hush!—­A sound sweet and far as the chime of angelic bells in some vast sky-tower, rang clearly through the hall over the heads of the now hushed and attentive audience—­and Alwyn, hearing the penetrating silveriness of those first notes that fell from Sarasate’s bow, gave a quick sigh of amazement and ecstasy,—­such marvellous purity of tone was intoxicating to his senses, and set his nerves quivering for sheer delight in sympathetic tune.  He glanced at the programme,—­“Concerto—­ Beethoven”—­and swift as a flash there came to his mind some lines he had lately read and learned to love: 

    “It was the Kaiser of the Land of Song,
    The giant singer who did storm the gates
    Of Heaven and Hell—­a man to whom the Fates
    Were fierce as furies,—­and who suffered wrong,
    And ached and bore it, and was brave and strong
    And grand as ocean when its rage abates.”

Beethoven! ...  Musical fullness of divine light! how the glorious nightingale notes of his unworded poesy came dropping through the air like pearls, rolling off the magic wand of the Violin Wizard, whose delicate dark face, now slightly flushed with the glow of inspiration, seemed to reflect by its very expression the various phases of the mighty composer’s thought!  Alwyn half closed his eyes and listened entranced, allowing his soul to drift like an oarless boat on the sweeping waves of the music’s will.  He was under the supreme sway of two Emperors of Art,—­Beethoven and Sarasate,—­and he was content to follow such leaders through whatever sweet tangles and tall growths of melody they might devise for his wandering.  At one mad passage of dancing semitones he started,—­it was as though a sudden wind, dreaming an enraged dream, had leaped up to shake tall trees to and fro,—­and the Pass of Dariel, with its frozen mountain-peaks, its tottering pines, and howling hurricanes, loomed back upon his imagination as he had seen it first on the night he had arrived at the Monastery—­but soon these wild notes sank and slept again in the dulcet harmony of an Adagio softer than a lover’s song at midnight.  Many strange suggestions began to glimmer ghost-like through this same Adagio, —­the fair, dead face of Niphrata flitted past him, as a wandering moonbeam flits athwart a cloud,—­then came flashing reflections of light and color,—­the bewildering dazzlement of Lysia’s beauty shone before the eyes of his memory with a blinding lustre as of flame, . . the phantasmagoria of the city of Al-Kyris seemed to float in the air like a faintly discovered mirage ascending from the sea,—­again