"The good God gave you to me, Rose-Jewel," he said. "Put your hands together while I play him a prayer of thanks." Unquestioningly, the child placed her two hands palm to palm, and looked up reverently, as he began to play.

It was a strange, wild sweet Te Deum that rose now and filled the little room. The very heart of praise was in it, the very soul of thankfulness. The man's dark eyes, for the time, had lost sight of the gift in the Giver, and were turned upward to the dingy ceiling, that was soon obscured by tears. The large drops rolled from his lids and ran down his cheeks. His face grew strained and seamed with agitation, and a thick sob rose in his throat. Still he played on with that rapt, uplifted gaze, until a sound from the sofa recalled him, and he started, and lowered his bow-arm with a sudden movement of dismay.

There were tears in the eyes of Rose-Jewel, too, and her little heart, which he felt should know only the joy of praise, was tasting too soon its sorrow and solemnity. As one quick, sharp sob followed another he felt a sudden deep contrition stab him, and lifting his bow again, he began to play in a quieting, comforting, reassuring strain, interspersed with words. that matched it.

"The dear God loves us both, Rose-Jewel," he said. "He wants us to be happy and bright, and not cry or get frightened. He sends us beautiful angels to take care of us, and make us go to sleep, and have sweet dreams. Listen to this. now, and see if you don't hear them flying into the room.”

The child ceased sobbing, and listened with earnest attentiveness, and by and by he had the joy of seeing her fall into a gentle sleep. He played on, pleasing himself with the idea that his music represented to her, in her sleep, the dreams the angels brought.

A sound from behind aroused him. The door was suddenly thrown open. He turned, still clasping the child, and met the infuriated eyes of the wife and mother.

The scene that followed was one that roused him to a point of excitement he had never known before. It was very brief, but in these moments, in which Rose-Jewel clung about his neck, while her mother tried in vain to get possession of

her, while she seemed to appeal to him for protection, and the very appeal seemed to give him the power of response, he felt himself, for the first time since his marriage, a strong, selfreliant man, and a sense of exultation swelled upward with the surgings of his excited blood, until he felt able to do and dare everything for the sake of defending this child. His wife, scarcely recognizing him in this unfamiliar aspect, was for a moment surprised into silence, but the reaction after this made her more angry yet, and the long restrained indignation of years broke loose. She gave it full vent, and he heard his beloved art de famed and derided, and a possession of the musical gift called a misfortune, a nuisance, and a curse. It was enough, she said, to have borne with it in him, and to have had calamity brought through him into her life; but to go through it again, with her own child-was more than she could stand! She declared that her confidence had been abused that Rose-Jewel should never be left one moment alone again with him—that it should be the object of her life, henceforth, to suppress every sign of musical talent the child might manifest-that she was resolved to do this, if she had to whip her, tie her, starve her, lock her up, a dozen times a day. She looked into his eyes defiantly, and warned him that the child should not be spared! As he heard these words come from her lips, he felt a tightening of the little arms around his neck. The fire of his passionate love for his baby was kindled into a keener flame, and he wished it were possible never to loose her from his arms. Her every second's absence from his sight would be torturing anxiety to his heart.

freedom came upon He reached for his

A longing for the old isolation of him. They might have it once again! violin and bow and put them into the case. ing the child pressed close against him, he

Then, still holdtook up the case with his free hand, and went out of the opened door.

It was a mild, overcast summer day. The very act of getting out of doors exhilarated and strengthened him. He spoke gay and encouraging words to the child, as he carried. her down the little, well-worn path which led to the river, without going in sight of the house. They had often gone along

this path together, and when he reached the bank and loosed the little boat tied there, and put Rose-Jewel down on the cushion in the bottom, with the violin against her feet, they were only re-enacting old familiar scenes of companionship and delight.

Eastin took up the small paddle that lay in the boat, and pushed out into the stream. The river was perfectly placid on days like this, and it was his delight to get off with the child a little way from land and to play to her. The boat scarcely moved upon the water and they did not go out far enough to get into the current. It was in the wide and sleepy part of the stream above the narrows.

The child had grown completely quiet now, and looked up at him with a face of unclouded happiness as he laid down the paddle and took his violin out of its case. He put it in perfect tune, and then, with the radiant presence opposite him, began to play.

On his own heart the shadow of a great dread hung heavy. He felt that this hour separated the dear and beautiful past from a future full of pain and wrangling, and even of cruelty and harshness. He would have to make a desperate fight with his wife for the soul and body of the child, and he felt that everything was against him. It was inevitable that he should be conquered, and what would it all mean to his darling? He looked into her beautiful, confiding little face, and it almost broke his heart. He resolved that she should be happy, for this hour, at least.

He played to her gay dance music, and she clapped her hands in time to it, and rocked her little body about, until the boat moved with her motion, and made them seem to be dancing. Eastin helped this effect by patting his foot and shaking his head, and answering audibly her little cries of glee. He passed from waltz to polka, and from polka to galop, the child conforming to every change of time; and Eastin, remembering that it was their last free hour together, got intoxicated with the delight of it, and bewildered by the thought of its fleetingness played faster and faster, nodding his head in time to Rose-Jewel's motions, and never taking his eyes from her face.

At last, with a final scrape of the bow, the exciting measure

ended, and he dropped his arms with a wild and breathless laugh, to which the child responded.

But how was it that, although both their tired bodies had grown still and relaxed, the sense of movement continued? Eastin felt a spasm of fear at his heart, and looking about him he discovered that they were far from the shore, and in the very center of the stream, whose current was bearing them rapidly onward, and every moment becoming stronger and swifter. He realized, in one awful instant, that they had been drifting for some time, and were quickly getting into the narrows. He looked ahead and could see the high cliffs of rocks on either side, which, for unknown ages of time, had been the impregnable bounds of that crowding torrent of waves and spray and bubbling foam that rushed onward to the falls below.

He reached for the little paddle, but he felt it would be useless. Every moment the motion was becoming stronger and more irresistible. He scarcely felt the thin planks between him and the seething stream below. He put out the paddle, but one blow from that bounding water knocked it from his hand and hurled it away, and he could see it tossed from wave to wave, with a sportive motion that seemed to mock him.

Suddenly a thought occurred to him, at which his heart gave a great bound, and a light, as it had been from heaven, overspread his face. He knew that rescue was impossible, and the idea that God had planned for him and for Rose-Jewel this release from the pain of earth and this entrance into the glory of heaven swept over him with a wave of joy. There were no words that he had ever said more devoutly than, "I believe in the forgiveness of sins," and he knew Rose-Jewel was already a companion for the angels. The vision of a certain ecstacy and bliss shone all around about him. O the freedom of it, the rapture, the music! Even the dread of physical death was nothing to him. Rose-Jewel would be his companion, and the journey would be short!

His one care was that the child should not be frightened. She had always answered to his control, and he took up the violin now and began to play.

"Listen, darling, listen!" holding her eyes with his own,

and drowning in a flood of rich, keen melody the noise of the rushing water.

And Rose-Jewel answered to the insistence of those swelling sounds of music as unquestionably as she had ever done. She forgot everything; as she bent forward to listen. He leaned close to her, that she might not lose one sound. The beauty of the music that swelled out over those turbulent waters was entrancing, even to himself. He did not know what he was playing-something he had never heard before, but something fit to play in those choirs of heaven to which he was going so quickly. He could not wonder that the child was under the spell of it. It came to him without one interruption-an unbroken strain of divinest sweetness, such as he had never heard before. In the very midst of it, the ever-narrowing, ever-quickening current gave the little boat such a wrench, that the violin was knocked out of his hand into the sleeping

waters.

Then Rose-Jewel gave a little cry, and turned to look about her, but before she had faced the sight of those terrifying waves, he caught her in his arms. She felt her little golden head drawn down upon its sweet, familiar resting place, and the arms of her father folded close about her. Words of love and comfort and reassurance were whispered in her ear. She was being rocked into repose and rest quite naturally, as she had so often been before, upon her father's breast.

There was a sudden rush of something cold and strangea swish of sound—a lurch—a fall—and then, still holding each other in the dear fondness of that close embrace, the musician and his little child sank together into death, and their spirits soared forth into infinite music.