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“Felix Moore will live,” he said positively. “You can’t kill that kind until their work is done. He’s got a work to do–if the minister’ll let him do it. And if the minister don’t let him do it, then I wouldn’t be in that minister’s shoes when he comes to the judgment–no, I’d rather be in my own. It’s an awful thing to cross the purposes of the Almighty, either in your own life or anybody else’s. Sometimes I think it’s what’s meant by the unpardonable sin–ay, that I do!”

Carmody people never asked what old Abel meant. They had long ago given up such vain questioning. When a man had lived as old Abel had lived for the greater part of his life, was it any wonder he said crazy things? And as for hinting that Mr. Leonard, a man who was really almost too good to live, was guilty of any sin, much less an unpardonable one–well, there now! what use was it to be taking any account of old Abel’s queer speeches? Though, to be sure, there was no great harm in a fiddle, and maybe Mr. Leonard was a mite too strict that way with the child. But then, could you wonder at it? There was his father, you see.

Felix finally lowered the violin, and came back to old Abel’s kitchen with a long sigh. Old Abel smiled drearily at him–the smile of a man who has been in the hands of the tormentors.

“It’s awful the way you play–it’s awful,” he said with a shudder. “I never heard anything like it–and you that never had any teaching since you were nine years old, and not much practice, except what you could get here now and then on my old, battered fiddle. And to think you make it up yourself as you go along! I suppose your grandfather would never hear to your studying music–would he now?”

Felix shook his head.

“I know he wouldn’t, Abel. He wants me to be a minister. Ministers are good things to be, but I’m afraid I can’t be a minister.”

“Not a pulpit minister. There’s different kinds of ministers, and each must talk to men in his own tongue if he’s going to do ’em any real good,” said old Abel meditatively. “YOUR tongue is music. Strange that your grandfather can’t see that for himself, and him such a broad-minded man! He’s the only minister I ever had much use for. He’s God’s own if ever a man was. And he loves you–yes, sir, he loves you like the apple of his eye.”

“And I love him,” said Felix warmly. “I love him so much that I’ll even try to be a minister for his sake, though I don’t want to be.”

“What do you want to be?”

“A great violinist,” answered the child, his ivory-hued face suddenly warming into living rose. “I want to play to thousands–and see their eyes look as yours do when I play. Sometimes your eyes frighten me, but oh, it’s a splendid fright! If I had father’s violin I could do better. I remember that he once said it had a soul that was doing purgatory for its sins when it had lived on earth. I don’t know what he meant, but it did seem to me that HIS violin was alive. He taught me to play on it as soon as I was big enough to hold it.”

“Did you love your father?” asked old Abel, with a keen look.

Again Felix crimsoned; but he looked straightly and steadily into his old friend’s face.

“No,” he said, “I didn’t; but,” he added, gravely and deliberately, “I don’t think you should have asked me such a question.”

It was old Abel’s turn to blush. Carmody people would not have believed he could blush; and perhaps no living being could have called that deepening hue into his weather-beaten cheek save only this gray-eyed child of the rebuking face.