“I have brought you here to-night,” Pan Andrew explained when he had closed the door and hung the trumpet on the wall, “in order to instruct you in the duties of the trumpeter of this church. For there might come a time when I should be ill, or perhaps even wounded—who knows, since I have so many enemies? I have taken the oath that I will play this trumpet each hour, and that it is no vain oath you have learned from the story which I have just told you. The trumpet must be played, happen what will. Therefore”—he drew out a piece of parchment and sketched on it with a bit of charcoal a series of lines—“you are to learn by heart the notes which I sketch here.”
“Here are the notes of the Heynal,” he continued after he had worked silently some minutes upon his composition, “the tune goes like this.” He hummed the melody and indicated on the parchment how each symbol represented a note.
“This,” he said, “it is necessary to learn. Work upon it during the coming week, and at this time next week be able to write it out. Do not let it interfere with your work at the collegium but glance at it in spare time. Also, if you can, sing to yourself beneath your breath the melody of the Heynal. When you have learned the melody, I will teach you to play it upon the trumpet. It is not a hard task, although perfection comes only after much effort. I will teach you single tongue and double tongue, and triple tongue which is the queen of the trumpeter’s music, just as grammar is king of the scholastic kingdom.”
Joseph slipped the parchment inside his coat.
“And now,” directed the father, “go down the stairs quickly and run with dispatch to our house. As you descend leave the lantern against the wall on the lowest tower level; be sure that you extinguish it. The mother is waiting and may be already lonely.”
“Nay, I left her with Elzbietka.”
“Bless the child. But, just the same, go with all speed, for city streets are dangerous at night. Keep close to the watchmen where possible and if asked why you are out so late, reply that your father is trumpeter in the tower and that you are returning home with a message from him.”
Joseph descended; he left the extinguished lantern at the place where the steps begin to mount the scaffolding, and felt his way down the stone steps to the tower door. There he rapped, until the watchman let him out. Once in the street he was off like the wind until he found himself in the Street of the Pigeons.
Much to his surprise the entrance door was opened, not by the old woman who saw to the care of the building, but by her son who up to this time had kept himself well out of sight. As the light from the lantern fell upon his face, Joseph drew back in alarm; when his father had mentioned the fact that the old woman was living with her son, Joseph had imagined that the son was a youth, or perhaps a boy—he did not expect to see a man who had the face of one of middle age. Yet the term “man” was less applicable to the son than was the word “creature,” for he was lank and thin and bowed over uncannily; long wisps of hair fell about his eyes; his fingers were bony and clawlike; his cheeks were sunken, and his eyes peered out of hollow caverns as if they feared the light. As he moved ahead of Joseph, with the lantern in his hand, he clung to the wall as does a cat, shunning open spaces and skulking as if always needing a rear defense.
At the foot of the stairs he stopped.