"How bright the night is," thought Sebastian. "One could read the notes, I believe, without a candle."
Bending over the pages, he found it to be quite true that the dots and lines were clearly definable.
"I wonder if I could write well by such a light; I'll try it," and idly lifting a pen from his sister's table, he dipped it and scribbled his name across the top of the music sheet.
"Very good," observed he, eyeing the scrawl with admiration; then a thought shot through his brain that seemed to turn him to stone, for he stood motionless, with head thrown back and pen uplifted, while the silvery moonlight, bathing him from head to foot, transfixed him into a marble statue of expectancy.
"I wonder if I could, I wonder if I could!" he whispered excitedly. "I'll try now, this very night. If I could get hold of Christoff's fugues, and copy them here in the moonlight, I should have a book of my own, and still keep my promise not to play out of his."
Turning to the cupboard that held the coveted treasure, Sebastian gazed wistfully into its second shelf. The doors were of strong steel lattice work, and Sebastian saw that it would be impossible either to insert his hand through the finely interlaced bars, or to bend them in the hope of securing a wider opening.
The boy's burning desire to obtain the music, and his sense of the justice of his purpose, would not let him draw back without a mighty effort.
Casting about for some means of assistance, his eye fell upon his brother's violin case. Opening this, he hastily extracted the bow, strong and slender, inserted it between the powerful wires, deftly worked the roll of music to and fro, drawing it ever nearer until it lay at the outer edge of the shelf. Slipping one finger and thumb through the mesh, he seized the roll firmly and drew it from the cabinet. For a moment he could do nothing but hug the volume madly to his breast, in the joy of his accomplishment; then running noiselessly up to his room for copy-paper, he speedily returned, spread the sheets before him on his sister's table, drew up a chair, and set to work.