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80548                 36 still, suppose he were cursed with his father’s lack of principle, his instability, his Bohemian instinct instincts. Thus Mr. Leonard tortured himself wretchedly before the coming of Fel Felix. The child did not look like either father or mother. Instead, Mr. Leonard found himself looking into a face which he had put away under the grasses thirty years before—the face of his girl bride, who had died at Margaret’s birth. Here again were her lustrous gray-black eyes, her ivory outlines, her fine-traced arch of brow; and here, looking out of those eyes, seemed

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known only to herself.

When Rachel Janet heard of the promise which Mr. Leonard had exacted from Felix she seethed with indignation; and, though she “knew her place” better than to s ary say anything to Mr. Leonard about it, she made her disapproval so plainly manifest in her bearing that the stern, gentle old man found the atmosphere of his hitherto peaceful manse unpleasantly stern chill and hostile for a time.

It was the wish of his heart that Felix should be a minister, as as he would have wished his own son to be, had one

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been born to him. Mr. Leonard thought rightly that the highest work to which any man could be called was a life of service to his fellows; but he made the mistake of supposing the field of service service much narrower than it is—of failing to see that a man may minister to the needs of humanity in many different but equally effective ways.

IV

Rachel Janet hoped that Mr. Leonard might not exact the fulfillment of Felix’s promise; but Felix himself, with the instinctive understanding of perfect love, knew that it was vain to hope for any change of

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viewpoint in his grandfather. He addressed himself to the keeping of his sierns promise in spirit and in letter and in spirit. He never went again to old Abels; he did not even play on the organ, though this was not forbidden, because any music wakened in him a passion of longing and ecstasy which demanded expression with an intensity not to be borne. He flung himself grimly into his studies, and conned Latin and Greek verbs with a persistency which soon placed him at the head of all competitors.

Only once in the long winter did he come near to breaking his promise. One evening, when March was melting with April, and the pulses

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of spring were stirring under the lingering snow, he was walking home from school alone. As he descended into the little hollow below the manse a lively lilt of music drifted up to meet him. It was only the product of a mouth organ, manipulated by a little black-eyed French-Canadian hired boy, sitting on the fence by the brook; but there was music in the ragged urchin and it came out through his simple toy. It tingled over Felix from head to foot; and, when Leon held out the mouth-organ with a fraternal grin of invitation, he snatched at it as a famished creature might snatch

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at food.

Then, with it half way to his lips, he paused. True, it was only the violin he had promised never to touch; but he felt that if he gave way ever so little to the desire that was in him, it would sweep everything before it. If he played on Leon Buote’s mouth-organ, there in that misty spring hollow dale, he would go to old Abel’s that evening; he knew he would go. To Leon’s amazement, Felix threw the mouth-organ back at him and ran up the hill as if he were pursued. There was something in his boyish face that frightened Leon; and it frightened

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was at the window, watching the cloud coming up over the sea. She just looked at me once, but didn’t say anything, and then went on watching the cloud. I didn’t like to sit down because she hadn’t asked me to, so I went to the window by her and watched it, too. It was a dreadful sight—the cloud was so black and the water so green, and there was such a strange light between the cloud and the water; yet there was something splendid in it, too. Part of the time I watched the storm, and the other part I watched Naomi’s face. It was dreadful to see, like the

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storm, and yet I liked to see it.

“After the thunder was over it rained a while longer, and Naomi sat down and talked to me. She asked me who I was, and when I told her she asked me to play something for her on the violin”

­—Felix shot a deprecating glance at Mr. Leonard—”because, she said, she’d heard I was a great hand at it. She wanted something lively, and I tried, just as hard as I could, to play something like that. But I couldn’t. I played something that was terrible—it just played itself—it seemed as if something