“Come on, Paul.” A girl’s black head appeared at the window. The player merely glanced at her and went on with his fireworks. “Oh, come on, you lummix! Shut up this row and come on. We’re going round the ranch and then down the west trail to the river.” The player’s sole answer was a wave of his left hand, his right still careering madly up the chromatic scale. “Aw, Paul, won’t you come?” A little girl whose face was screwed up in a bewitching pout came to the door. “Now, Peg, you know I don’t quit till I’m done, and I’ve got half an hour yet. Come back for me then, Peg.” She came close to him. “I don’t want to go with Asa and Adelina without you. They—they—I don’t want to go.” “Oh, go on, Peg, for a run as far as Pine Croft driveway and back again. Go! See, the rain is all gone. It’s a lovely day. Run now, that’s a good girl. I’ll come when I’m through my practice.” “You’re a mean old thing. You don’t care a bit about me,” said Peg, bouncing indignantly out of the room. But the boy paid no heed. He was hard at his scales again with an enthusiasm which amounted almost to a passion. All else, for the time being, was as nothing to him. He was at double octaves now, his fingers roaring up and down the keys. In the full tide of the uproar Colonel Pelham appeared at the door of the dining room where his wife was engaged in her domestic activities. “What a row the chap makes!” he said. “You’d think it was a full grown man at the thing.” “He has wonderful fingers,” said his wife, pausing in her work. “Listen! How, that is really quite unusual work.” “Is it? You ought to know. It’s all fury and fuss to me. But I like the way he sticks it. The other youngsters were trying to pull him away—I saw them at it, but it was no go.” “He loves his music. He’s quite mad about it,” replied his wife. “He may be,” said the Colonel, “but it’s not that. It’s a point of honour with him. He has a kind of feeling his mother would like it.” “He’s a queer little chap, you know. He has queer ideas about things.” “What do you mean exactly?” inquired the Colonel. “Queer in what sense?” “Well,” said his wife thoughtfully, “he has queer ideas about God. He says he sees Him. One day I found him with an intense look upon his face, and his explanation was that he was listening for God.” “‘Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth,’” quoted the Colonel to himself. “But, my dear,” protested his wife, “you know that sort of thing was quite all right for those times. But now-a-days, in British Columbia—well, you know, it’s a little unusual.” “‘If any man hear My voice and open the door,’” again quoted the Colonel softly. “Oh, come now, Edgar. You don’t think those things are to be taken literally in these days—voices, and all that sort of thing. You’ll be off into all sorts of Spiritualistic nonsense. He _is_ queer. As a matter of fact, he is almost uncanny, unreal, unnatural.”