Then the great Voice came out of the wind and the darkening sky, sturdy as a great captain's, and shouted aloud through the thick of the flakes: "_Pray, but regret not, Andy. You did the Work of your Hand!_" So he died in the snow on the top of that hill, the contented artist of a perished dream, the master worker in a fabric that immediately dissolved. What he had told the Voice was true; the triumph he felt as he handed over to the Summer a bit of his best and she threw it away to the drifting winds like a bit of dying music--the joy he felt then was enough to last him till eternity ended. He had heard God's whisper in his ear; and he never would have heard it if he had stayed in the mill. He had done what God wanted him to do, a beautiful thing as beautifully as he knew how--and he felt at last that the beauty of it was somehow not lost at all. III Abruptly the old man left and went out into the snowy night. For there were tears in his eyes. IV The poker game was finished. Pigalle sauntered slowly over to my table. "You know Handy?" he asked, slowly, in his broken English. "Who's that?" "The hole man that ees just go out. 'Is name ees Handy Gor-don." He rolled his great expressive eyes. "'E's cra-zee man. Also wot you call loafer: 'e do not work wen 'e wish not to. But, _mon Dieu_, 'ow 'e can play, that man!" He made a suave, swelling gesture with his hands and arms and heaved up his great bulk gracefully. "'Ow 'e can play! 'Ow 'e can _play_!" "He is Andy Gordon!" I exclaimed. "What is he? A weaver?" "_Comment_?" "A weaver? Makes cloth--like this?" I held up the corner of the tablespread. "_Corpo_, no!" ejaculated the astonished Pigalle. "Handy ees violinist-a." HEART OF YOUTH[12] BY WALTER J. MUILENBURG From _The Midland_ [12] Copyright, 1915, by John T. Frederick. Copyright, 1916, by Walter J. Muilenburg. The boy on the cultivator straightened as the horses walked from the soft, spongy ground of the cornfield to the firmer turf at the side of the road. He spoke sharply to the plodding team and turned the cultivator around, lowering the blades for another row. Then, when the horses had fallen into a slow walk, he slouched down, and with bent head watched the hills of young corn pass beneath him. He could not have been more than sixteen or seventeen, for his eager eyes looked out from under soft lashes, and his face showed the smooth, healthy tan of a boy. His brown hands were so small that he could barely keep a firm grasp on the heavy levers. When he raised the blades, his fingers became streaked with red and the corners of his mouth drew back and grew hard with concentrated effort. Occasionally he tugged at the reins knotted about his shoulders, but, except for his low, abrupt commands to the horses, he was silent. At the end of the row he raised the shovels, got off the cultivator stiffly, and stretched himself out in the new spring grass of a little rise by the roadside.