A rich light gush of lilac fragrance which seemed to blend with the brilliant melody of the polacca the organ played, poured in at the open windows, and melted into his mood. He sat softly beating with his hand the dance of the tune, with the debonair image of Muriel floating in melody through his fancy. She came again, expressed in a tenderer mood, as the music changed to a strain of yearning and dreamful sweetness, like a poem of deep love. Then followed one of the negro melodies of the day, a simple and mournful air, with notes of anguish, and still she was present in his mind linked with a shadowy remembrance of the wrongs and sorrows of the race to whose low estate her heart stooped so often to help and console. Soul in soul, he moved with her through the rich and melancholy maze of the succeeding music—a sombre and sumptuous Italian romanza, crowded with slow passion and tumult, with notes that swelled and poured athwart the central theme, like some dim innumerable host of love and sorrow gathering and forming, and dividing again in baffled and harmonious disorder. Air upon air came after, and sinking away, the listener lost for awhile their melody and meaning, and only knew that they were sweet and sad; till rising from reverie he heard the last of a solemn and tender strain like some delicious psalm of death and life immortal. It ceased; there was a pause, and the world’s hopes and struggles surged in upon his kindled spirit, as the organ rolled forth in golden sweetness the martial and mournful andante of the Marseillaise. The French hymn of liberty, whose sombre and fiery tonal morning burst once on the birth-throes of Democracy, like the light of God upon the chaos of the globe! He never heard it without emotion, and now it rushed into his soul, dilating and expanding into vast orchestral harmonics. His eye gleamed and bright color lit his face as he listened to the triumphal terror and glory of the thrilling strain. On and on it swept in cadences of tears and fire; down and down it darkened in weird and burning melody, fraught with the passion of all human wrongs; and rising into the pealing cry of the battle-summons, and flowing into the proud, heroic tones of mournful rapture which seem to exult for the dead who die for man, it melted away. Harrington sat, flushed and throbbing, in the fragrant silence of the room. The organ had ceased and gone, and he was alone. Gradually the tumult of his spirit sank into golden calm, and with the charm of the music still lingering in his mind, he put the faded herbs into the drawer, and prepared to begin his tasks.