The quiet day was drawing to its close. Within the room the shadows were already thickening; without, long lines of mist festooned the hills in plumes of royal purple, and the red haze of Indian-summer had gathered into broad streamers that unfurled their splendor across the tranquil sky. The floating twilight hung over the wide and level pastures. Down by the creek the scarlet sage still showed its coral fringe, and sometimes the woodbine, close by the house, waved its painted leaves. Far off in the filmy vale the group of maples that had stood crowned with a golden glory now shrouded themselves in black; and beyond, like a long stretch of desolate shore, the great gloom lifted up its chilly banks. Many times from the window in his parlor Franz Erckman had watched the divine pageant of night ascend the valley in all the pomp and grandeur of its magnificence, in all the solemn majesty of its silence, in all the ineffable depths of its sadness. Many times in his loneliness he had seen it pass, when a vision of the fair Rhineland would come back to his heart. Many times through its profound solitude he had looked out with yearning eyes, with listening ears, striving to comprehend its sublime mystery. Many times he had turned to it with a soul oppressed by despair reaching toward the Infinite. For, though the people did not know it, beneath the rough exterior of this reserved German dwelt a love of the beautiful—a love so passionate sometimes, it seemed crushing his very spirit that he could not give it utterance in his music. Then it was that often he would rise from his organ in bitter disappointment, and go out with his trouble to seek consolation from the night—the night forever wan with her own unspoken sorrow. But he stood watching the face of the sleeper, paying no heed to the gathering shade. He stooped and arranged the cushions about the fragile form with the gentle touch of a woman, while upon his features there rested an expression more beautiful than they could ever borrow from the softened light of the evening. “She would have died,” he said to himself. “But for the music, I believe she would have died! The chords of the organ spoke to her when all earthly words failed. She, at least, can understand the language I have been striving to learn.” Frail little creature! She appeared, indeed, like a spirit of some other world. Her every nerve had vibrated in sympathy, and Franz could hardly help thinking, as he looked at her, that, soundless to human ears, there played about her ceaseless strains of melody. Music seemed to be the vitality that gave her life, the only nourishment that fed her soul. When she first came to him for instruction, he quickly discovered that she possessed not the least power of execution, and then had taken no special notice of her further. Wrapped up in his art, teaching the children had never been a pleasure to him. He compelled himself to endure it as a means of subsistence.