It was a wonderful melody, so simple, yet so full and thrilling in its harmonies. The player's face grew softer as he touched the keys, and he looked almost youthful again in spite of his worn appearance. It was not age, however, that had grizzled Arthur Dalziel's hair. He was but two-and-thirty, though he looked like forty-five. Again and again he played the melody, and an unwonted moisture gathered in his cold grey eyes. The music seemed to affect him strangely. Pausing for a little, while his fingers rested caressingly on the keys, he sighed: "Poor Jack! Poor Jack! Would that I knew--would that I knew! Still, would it make me any happier to know? And then--perhaps it might mean ruin--it's better as it is." Once more he played over the fragment, scarcely glancing now at the music, for what we have once known is easily learned again. The wind howled in strange unison with the plaintive air, but was it merely the wind that made the musician start and drop his hands nervelessly on his knees? "No, no," he exclaimed, "you are an imaginative, nervous fool! That air is known to yourself alone of living men--it is impossible--impossible--" Some sort of fascination seemed to chain him to the instrument. Mechanically his fingers sought the keys, and the self-same air came trembling from the strings. He seemed scarcely to believe, however, that his former fancy (whatever it was) had been all imagination, for he struck the opening chords softly, and with the air of one who listens for a response he is but half certain of receiving. Clear above the notes of the piano, above the wild piping of the wintry gale, rose the wail of a violin. Very gently and tenderly Dalziel continued to play, but his face was ashen pale, for the mysterious performer out there in the storm answered him note for note. "Strange," he muttered, as the strain ended; "but, ghost or no ghost, I'll test him with the unwritten part." He sprang up and turned out the gas. Then flinging open the window, heedless how the gusts of night-wind scattered his papers about the room, he seated himself once more at the instrument, and dashed into a variation on the same theme. Curiosity had taken the place of fear, and his playing was bold and clear. Again the violin rang out, and in perfect accord the intricate variation was rendered. Dalziel suddenly abandoned the air and dropped into an accompaniment, but the player held on undismayed to the end. It was a weird but exquisite performance. "Marvellous! Correct to the minutest particular!" Dalziel cried. "I shall fathom this, come what may." He went to the window and peered into the square, where the gas lamps shivered in the blast and threw an uncertain glimmer, that was not light, on the deserted pavement. [Illustration: "DALZIEL STOOPED OVER THE PITIFUL LITTLE BUNDLE."] No living soul was to be seen, but a voice came out of the darkness: a child's pleading voice:--