The other shook his head. "I don't know what you mean," he said.
Sebastian was fastening the big violin in place on his back. He looked up under smiling brows, as he bent to draw the last strap. Then he touched his sturdy legs with his hand and laughed. "I mean that these are the horses to carry me to Hamburg and back many times. I shall hear the great Reinken play!—And I, too, shall play!" he added proudly.
"Do you never doubt, Sebastian?" asked the other thoughtfully, as they moved on.
"Whether you will be a great musician?... Sometimes I see myself going back—" He paused as if ashamed to have said so much.
Sebastian shook his head. His blue eyes were following the clouds in the spring day. "Sometimes I doubt whether I am among the elect," he said slowly. "But never that I am to be a musician." His full lips puckered dreamily, and his golden head nodded, keeping slow time. "By the waters—" he broke out into singing. "Is it not wunderschön!" The blue eyes turned with a smile. "It is wunderschön! Ach—wunderschön! Is it not, Erdman?" He seemed to awake and laid his hand affectionately on the boy's shoulder.
The other nodded. "Yes, it is schön," he said wistfully.
"Come, I will teach it to thee!"
And the notes of Reinken's choral, "An den Wasserflüssen Babylon," floated with a clear, fresh sound on the spring morning air, two hundred years ago, and more, as two charity pupils walked along the road to Lüneburg.