About a hundred yards from her windows, to the rear, were the open windows of a church which fronted the next street, and stood dos-a-dos to the dwelling of the Madisons. The Sunday-school hour had been advanced for the hot weather, and, partly on this account, and partly because of the summer absence of many families, the attendants were few. But the young voices were conducted, rather than accompanied, in pious melody by a cornetist who worthily thought to amend, in his single person, what lack of volume this paucity occasioned. He was a slender young man in hot black clothes; he wore the unfacaded collar fatally and unanimously adopted by all adam's-apple men of morals; he was washed, fair, flat-skulled, clean-minded, and industrious; and the only noise of any kind he ever made in the world was on Sunday. "Prashus joowuls, sweet joowuls, _thee_ jams off iz crowowun," sang the little voices feebly. They were almost unheard; but the young man helped them out: figuratively, he put them out. And the cornet was heard: it was heard for blocks and blocks; it was heard over all that part of the town--in the vicinity of the church it was the only thing that could be heard. In his daily walk this cornetist had no enemies: he was kind-hearted; he would not have shot a mad dog; he gladly nursed the sick. He sat upon the platform before the children; he swelled, perspired and blew, and felt that it was a good blowing. If other thoughts vapoured upon the borders of his mind, they were of the dinner he would eat, soon after noon, at the house of one of the frilled, white-muslin teachers. He was serene. His eyes were not blasted; his heart was not instantly withered; his thin, bluish hair did not fall from his head; his limbs were not detached from his torso--yet these misfortunes had been desired for him, with comprehension and sincerity, at the first flat blat of his brassy horn. It is impossible to imagine the state of mind of this young cornetist, could he have known that he had caused the prettiest girl in town to jump violently out of bed with what petitions upon her lips regarding his present whereabouts and future detention! It happened that during the course of his Sunday walk on Corliss Street, that very afternoon, he saw her--was hard-smitten by her beauty, and for weeks thereafter laid unsuccessful plans to "meet" her. Her image was imprinted: he talked about her to his boarding-house friends and office acquaintances, his favourite description being, "the sweetest-looking lady I ever laid eyes on." Cora, descending to the breakfast-table rather white herself, was not unpleasantly shocked by the haggard aspect of Hedrick, who, with Laura and Mrs. Madison, still lingered.