It was four o'clock. School was out and the sunshine had gone. Klaus came into the sober front parlor, his round cheeks red with the cold, and lit the candles for his practice hour. Wonderful the candles were to Klaus, for father and mother had brought the silver candlesticks from Germany in that dim past before the dawn of things, when little Klaus was not. Time was, a year ago, when Klaus had hated his fiddle to the very pegs. But it had happened late one afternoon, when Klaus was watching the strange, slow boats on the canal, that he had heard somebody playing in an upper room near by, - playing so softly that Klaus had to creep into the alley to hear. From there he could catch a glimpse through a window of a white, powerful hand sweeping in soft, sure curves, a motion that seemed part of the sound itself. Of a sudden the hand quivered like a bird hovering, and a great shower of notes came fluttering down into the alley. That was "bouncing-bow," the impossible feat to Klaus, whose bow drew so slantingly over the strings or became so cramped in his fingers. Then there was a moment's pause, and Klaus was turning to go home when a wonderful melody rang out in the twilight. It was so real, so lovely and full of a gentleness all new to Klaus, that he stopped, trembling. Poor little Klaus! he listened and listened, wondering at first, then forgetting even to wonder, so tender of heart was he. Long after the music had ceased, Klaus stood there in the narrow place against the wall. When he came out, the canal lay like smooth gold between straight banks, and the very air was filled with golden motes out of the setting sun. The old City Hospital looked like a castle against the light; and down the canal a few blocks away a boat floated upon the gold, so still, so strange, it seemed to Klaus as though it, too, could think and listen even as he went home scarcely knowing when he turned the corner. When we have lived in this wonderful world awhile we find that to each of us comes an hour like the hour of sunrise. Such to Klaus-though he did not know it was that evening hour when he listened against the wall. He did not know why he began to practice more carefully, or why he slipped away from other boys, to listen to the string quartette that rehearsed on Saturdays in his father's room. But his father, who played the 'cello so many years to give Klaus bread and butter-the Copyright, 1906, by THE CENTURY Co. All rights reserved. wise father saw and understood; and because he was wise he said nothing, until one day he came in and caught Klaus playing very sweetly and clearly on his fiddle. Then he took him by the hand and led him over to the great professor at the Music College, who received him without a word into his class. And it became Klaus's one ambition to hear the old professor say thoughtfully and slowly, when the lesson was finished: "Good! good! Now do better next time." But the praises were few and the frowns came almost every day. So it was that on this winter afternoon Klaus came in haste to light the fire and the candles. He set his fiddle against his knee and pulled its little black ears to put it in tune. Then he began to practise bow-exercises before a mirror, carefully and with that patience which is given just to certain years of our life. The Herr Professor had called him "stupid, stupid!" and the cold boyish fingers trembled on the finger-board remembering it. "Practice is to think," he had added with wise uplifted finger--" to think, so fine, so clear! Lessons do nothing — only that." And so Klaus set his face hard toward the task. Presently he was roused by some one brushing along the narrow hall, and two of the orchestra men pushed slowly in, leading his father. "He slipped on the ice," said one. "It's his left wrist." Klaus seemed to be dreaming. His father sank into the big chair, while one of the men carried the 'cello over to the corner, setting it down in silence. As he did so the father looked up and made a gesture that frightened Klaus. Could it be that he would not play again—his father, who had played always? It was a busy evening. Grandmother brought down the liniment which she had made herself, so much better than any doctor's; mother with pale, set face ran hastily up and down the stair. But upon the subject of the 'cello they kept silence. It stood in its corner, its polished scroll curving nobly, its graceful back, of which father was so proud, glimmering with elusive lights and shadows. Klaus passed its corner by with averted face and swelling tears. That night Klaus found his mother sitting pale and wearied-looking by the kitchen fire. "You are tired," he said; "you must rest now a little." "Oh, Klaus, what shall we do ?" She spoke suddenly, dropping her two hands together upon her lap. "There is so little money now." "Oh, don't, mother," he said, as she bent her head and hid her face from him. "Don't! I will help you." "I will help you," he said again in a new voice. And his mother rose and laid her head against his shoulder as if he had been a man. Then they went up-stairs together. Next morning Klaus went stamping down the street, blowing his fingers for the cold. He found his way to the office of the bandmaster. "What can you play?" he asked, looking doubtfully at Klaus's red face. "I can play anything!" Klaus felt that he could that morning. "Just try me once," and Klaus's face lighted with a smile. "Well," said the bandmaster, slowly. "Perhaps Could you play the cymbals?" "Oh, yes!" "Then come this afternoon at two. There is a funeral." Surely never beat so happy a heart at a funeral as that of Klaus as he marched along the street behind the glittering bass-horn. Klaus played with a will, striking the cymbals past each other with the same free movement that men had used before him in old Egypt, before the days of Christ. The powerful sound of them seemed to surround him and to shiver through his very veins. But every few moments the edge of the disks in his unskilled hands came striking sharply against his wrists, so that they bled from the cuts. That night Klaus dropped two shining silver thalers into his mother's apron. But a reckoning came on the morrow when Klaus must go to his lesson, for the cuts on his wrists grew stiff and sore in the night, and his hands were swollen. "Never mind the bow-exercise to-day. We will take first the étude," said the professor, as he tuned Klaus's violin to save time. Klaus began And Klaus began again at the beginning, sternly, and Klaus obeyed in trembling haste. only to play worse than ever. He had known pupils who were sent home from "It's my hands," he said, with a little struggle the lesson, but it had never happened to him in his throat. before. As he opened the door the master called to him: "Not the hands merely, but a stupid care "I will come soon to thy house. I will see thy father." But Klaus paid no heed to further disgrace or rebuke. He turned for hiding into. a vacant room. The tears were mastering him, and he was far too miserable to take up at once the thread of his childish day. Presently he heard the master's heavy, emphatic step go down the hall and away. Klaus longed to run after him to beg for just five minutes for a single moment, even of trial. But the footsteps died into silence while he hesitated. Then Klaus, tenacious little German that he was, crept back into the master's room, determined to wait for his return and beg his lesson once more. The Herr Professor had no thought of returning, but went briskly along the bank of the canal and up the crowded ways. At Klaus's door-step he stood quite still, rubbing the back of his head, and saying between his teeth, "Blockhead! Fool! What am I doing?" Then he turned away. At the corner he met the horn-player who had helped to bring Klaus's father to his home. "Are you going to Herr Kunckle's?" he demanded. "What can you say to him? What can you say to that poor fellow? He has broken his left wrist. Why, man, he will never play again! Do you understand?" "Yes," said the horn-player, moving his big feet uneasily, as if he had been caught in mischief. "But one must say something. You would n't-" "Say something! Ach Himmel! That is a worse stupidity than mine. But go-go! Perhaps you understand to comfort. Never to play-and such a tone-such good, wholesome playing! Ach Himmel!" and with a lessness," returned the Herr Professor, striding great gesture the Herr Professor strode back to scornfully up the narrow room. "HE SET HIS FIDDLE AGAINST HIS KNEE AND PULLED ITS LITTLE BLACK EARS TO PUT IT IN TUNE." "No, truly it is the hands," pleaded Klaus. "I cut them yesterday on the cymbals." "On the cymbals!" repeated the master, stopping directly before Klaus. "Dreadful, dreadful! Put up the fiddle," he continued, the Music College. Klaus had crept back into the master's alcove, musty with old German books and music. He was silent as the master came in. He had no wish to spy, but how could he speak when the master was striding up and down? Klaus quite |