It all depended on this. Did Peter know the story of the Tartar invasion and the broken note at the end of the Heynal? God must be trusted that he did not. This prayer was on Joseph’s lips as Peter said, “Now for your music.”
Up went the trumpet.
Then it seemed to Joseph that he had once done this very thing before. The whole world changed beneath him. The great stone city had become wood, and it was everywhere in flames. Men of short stature and ugly faces were riding about furiously on little horses. Close at hand a man had descended from his horse and had drawn a bow from his shoulders and an iron-tipped arrow from a quiver. The bow bent, the arrow was notched.
He played.
Peter nodded. The Heynal was not new to him, and he knew that the boy was playing as usual—that is, he knew up to a certain point. Joseph hesitated at the place where the music ordinarily breaks off—this time he added three notes of his own which definitely finished the Heynal. It took courage to play those notes, for he knew not but that at any moment he might feel the Cossack’s dagger in his throat. At length he let the trumpet fall and looked about.
The blood surged into his head with a rush. The Cossack was nodding approval! He did not know, then!
He went to the windows at south, east, and north, successively, and played as he had already played.
“Now hurry for your lodgings!”
Peter gripped the boy’s arm and pushed him ahead all the way down the stairs, after giving final orders to the men who guarded Pan Andrew. They found no one in the square below and slunk along in the shadows toward the university district. The Cossack was exulting again that his plans were working, and as he went along he looked about him for a quiet corner where he could finish Joseph with his dagger once he had the crystal in his hands and was on the way back to the tower. Then they would settle with the father and there would be no one left to give information concerning them. A company of Armenian merchants would leave the city unhindered in the course of the following day.