Again a traveler came to the palace. He brought with him a harp of seven strings, on which he played to the children. He sang to them for a while and then for a space was silent. Eline listened to the strange, beautiful music. And to her it seemed that there was speech in the harp—that it spoke. The other children seemed to listen to the music, but to them it did not seem to speak. To Eline there were echoes of wonderful things the palace knew not; things that the language of the king could not tell. The harp spoke in a way that the Princess Eline knew and understood, although there were no words in its tones. There were sad and sorrowful notes that told of sorrows the palace never knew. There were strains of music that sounded harsh to the listening ear, though to the careless they told of happiness alone. And as she listened, Eline dreamed. Clearer and more clear she felt that the harp told of a world of men where sorrow and sadness and strife were not unknown; where joy should be, and was not; where the people groped their way through darkness and thought it light. “Return! Return!” called the harp. [Illustration: “I WILL RETURN”] And a mighty resolve came to Eline. “I will return! I will! I will!” She remembered the king’s saying: “The children of the king are free to come and go,” he had said. “I may not keep them if they will not stay,” he had told her. She loved him much; but the call came clear, and she dared not seek him to say farewell, lest she should be persuaded to remain. She bowed her head and to the harper spoke: “I will go,” she said. “I will return with you.” Then the harp sent forth such a melody of joyous music that it echoed thrilling through the hot discordant notes of the world beyond the sunset; and for a moment a chord of harmony ran through the life of men: “Joy unto you, men of the underworld! Joy unto you, children of sorrow! Joy unto you, sons of forgetfulness! Joy unto all beings!” They passed out of the garden together, the musician and the soul. [Illustration: THROUGH PINE FOREST] III Westward they traveled, westward, ever westward. The way was dark and sometimes dreary, and Eline felt like one awakened from a beautiful dream before it was ended. Through the pine forests, over mountains, in deep valleys, and by mighty streams they traveled. Ever they had the harp to cheer the way, to urge their footsteps onward. For the path was untrodden where they went. “There is a path,” the harper said, “a pleasant path and broad, but the journey is long and we must hasten on our way. To the setting sun, to the gleaming sea, we must go; nor may we seek a beaten track lest we be too late.” A river there was in whose waters were reflected pictures of all that surrounded them—such crystal clear reflections that sometimes it seemed as if they looked at real things in the water mirrored in the things around them. [Illustration]