As before, Mrs. Holly followed him, and as before, both involuntarily paused just inside the barn door to listen. No runs and trills and rollicking bits of melody floated down the stairway to-night. The notes were long-drawn, and plaintively sweet; and they rose and swelled and died almost into silence while the man and the woman by the door stood listening.
They were back in the long ago—Simeon Holly and his wife—back with a boy of their own who had made those same rafters ring with shouts of laughter, and who, also, had played the violin—though not like this; and the same thought had come to each: "What if, after all, it were John playing all alone in the moonlight!"
It had not been the violin, in the end, that had driven John Holly from home. It had been the possibilities in a piece of crayon. All through childhood the boy had drawn his beloved "pictures" on every inviting space that offered,—whether it were the "best-room" wall-paper, or the fly leaf of the big plush album,—and at eighteen he had announced his determination to be an artist. For a year after that Simeon Holly fought with all the strength of a stubborn will, banished chalk and crayon from the house, and set the boy to homely tasks that left no time for anything but food and sleep—then John ran away.
That was fifteen years ago, and they had not seen him since; though two unanswered letters in Simeon Holly's desk testified that perhaps this, at least, was not the boy's fault.
It was not of the grown-up John, the willful boy and runaway son, however, that Simeon Holly and his wife were thinking, as they stood just inside the barn door; it was of Baby John, the little curly-headed fellow that had played at their knees, frolicked in this very barn, and nestled in their arms when the day was done.
Mrs. Holly spoke first—and it was not as she had spoken on the porch.
"Simeon," she began tremulously, "that dear child must go to bed!" And she hurried across the floor and up the stairs, followed by her husband. "Come, David," she said, as she reached the top; "it's time little boys were asleep! Come!"
Her voice was low, and not quite steady. To David her voice sounded as her eyes looked when there was in them the far-away something that hurt. Very slowly he came forward into the moonlight, his gaze searching the woman's face long and earnestly.
"And do you—want me?" he faltered.
The woman drew in her breath with a little sob. Before her stood the slender figure in the yellow-white gown—John's gown. Into her eyes looked those other eyes, dark and wistful,—like John's eyes. And her arms ached with emptiness.