He walked the length of the orchard’s middle avenue between long, sinuous boughs picked out with delicate, rose-hearted bloom.  When he reached its southern boundary he flung himself down in a grassy corner of the fence where another lilac bush grew, with ferns and wild blue violets at its roots.  From where he now was he got a glimpse of a house about a quarter of a mile away, its gray gable peering out from a dark spruce wood.  It seemed a dull, gloomy, remote place, and he did not know who lived there.

He had a wide outlook to the west, over far hazy fields and misty blue intervales.  The sun had just set, and the whole world of green meadows beyond swam in golden light.  Across a long valley brimmed with shadow were uplands of sunset, and great sky lakes of saffron and rose where a soul might lose itself in colour.  The air was very fragrant with the baptism of the dew, and the odours of a bed of wild mint upon which he had trampled.  Robins were whistling, clear and sweet and sudden, in the woods all about him.

“This is a veritable ‘haunt of ancient peace,’” quoted Eric, looking around with delighted eyes.  “I could fall asleep here, dream dreams and see visions.  What a sky!  Could anything be diviner than that fine crystal eastern blue, and those frail white clouds that look like woven lace?  What a dizzying, intoxicating fragrance lilacs have!  I wonder if perfume could set a man drunk.  Those apple trees now—­why, what is that?”

Eric started up and listened.  Across the mellow stillness, mingled with the croon of the wind in the trees and the flute-like calls of the robins, came a strain of delicious music, so beautiful and fantastic that Eric held his breath in astonishment and delight.  Was he dreaming?  No, it was real music, the music of a violin played by some hand inspired with the very spirit of harmony.  He had never heard anything like it; and, somehow, he felt quite sure that nothing exactly like it ever had been heard before; he believed that that wonderful music was coming straight from the soul of the unseen violinist, and translating itself into those most airy and delicate and exquisite sounds for the first time; the very soul of music, with all sense and earthliness refined away.

It was an elusive, haunting melody, strangely suited to the time and place; it had in it the sigh of the wind in the woods, the eerie whispering of the grasses at dewfall, the white thoughts of the June lilies, the rejoicing of the apple blossoms; all the soul of all the old laughter and song and tears and gladness and sobs the orchard had ever known in the lost years; and besides all this, there was in it a pitiful, plaintive cry as of some imprisoned thing calling for freedom and utterance.

At first Eric listened as a man spellbound, mutely and motionlessly, lost in wonderment.  Then a very natural curiosity overcame him.  Who in Lindsay could play a violin like that?  And who was playing so here, in this deserted old orchard, of all places in the world?