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“I can play you anything that has mother in it,” said he, and a wistful, yearning, hungry look came into his eyes and the edges of his lips quivered.

The company seated themselves and the boy drew his bow across the instrument. The brush of a painter could not have made the picture more perfect than the vision the Lad brought forth as the bow played on the strings. The picture of a sea, sunlighted and level, stretching far out; the picture of a curved shore: the shore of a quiet bay, rimmed with its beach of shining sand and noisy with the gurgle and splash of lapsing waves; the picture of a home quiet and orderly and filled with the tenderness of a gentle spirit; and then a heavier chord told of the coming of a darker hour when the mother lay dying. The violin fairly sobbed and groaned and wailed, as if the spirit of unconsolable grief were tugging heavily at the strings. Anon, a bell tolled solemnly out of it and its heavy knell clanged through the room. And then the music rested for a minute; and in the silence it seemed as if the grave came into sight as plainly as if the eyes of all were actually looking at its open mouth. Again the music sounded, and the sods, one after another, fell on the coffin, dull and heavy, changing to a gravelly, smothered sound as the grave filled. Once more it paused, and then a clear, sweet strain arose, sad, but pure and fine and hopeful, as voice of angels could have sung it, trustful and resigned. The bow stopped again; for a moment the violin was silent. And then the Lad lifted his face and, laying the bow softly upon the strings, began to play what all instinctively felt was a hymn to the spirit of his mother. Slowly, softly, sweetly, as the strains which the dying sometimes hear, the pure, clear, smooth notes stole out into the hushed air. It was playing, not such as mortal plays to mortal, but such as spirit plays to spirit and soul to soul, to-night, across the street of heaven. The Lad still used an earthly instrument and touched its strings with mortal fingers; but never, while they live, will those who heard that hymn believe that anything less than the spirit of the boy drew from the instrument the notes that filled the room with their divine sweetness. Indeed, the Lad did not act as if he were conscious of his body or of bodily presences around him. His face was lifted and his eyes, from which the tears were streaming, were gazing upward, not as if into vacancy, but as if they saw the bright being that had passed within the veil, standing in all the beauty of her transfiguration before them. For a smile was on the boy’s lips, even while the tears were rolling down his cheeks. And when, at last, the arm suspended its motion; when the sweet notes ceased to sound and the last chord had died away, the Lad still kept his uplifted posture and his features held the same rapt expression.

The company sat motionless, their gaze fastened on the Lad. Not an eye was without its tear. The cheeks of the old Trapper were wet; and Herbert, touched by some memory or overcome by the pathos of the music, was actually sobbing. The old man, with a tread as light as a moccasined foot could make, stepped softly to the side of the Lad and taking him by the arm–while the company rose as one man–motioned to Henry with his hand, and then, without a word, the Trapper and Herbert and “The Man Who Didn’t Know Much” passed out of the room, and taking boat, shoved off and glided from sight in the blue darkness of the overhanging night, amid whose eastern gloom the great, luminous, mellow-hearted stars of the morning were already aflame.