And thus, till late in the night, he turned away, and his face grew brighter, and his heart lighter, as he listened to his four tunes. It was such good company, he said, and the attic was so lonely at night. And there was no one to find fault with the organ there, or to call it old-fashioned. Treffy admired it with all his heart, and felt that at night at least it had justice done to it.
But there was one who was listening to the old organ, and admiring it as much as Treffy, of whom the old man knew nothing. Outside his door, crouching down with his ear against a large crack, lay a little ragged boy; he had come into the great lodging-room downstairs to sleep, and had laid down on one of the hard benches, when old Treffy's barrel-organ began to play. He had not listened to it much at first, but when the first notes of "Home, sweet Home," had been sounded forth, little Christie had raised his head on his elbow, and listened with all his might. It was almost too much for him; it was a memory of the past. A few months ago, little Christie had a mother, and this was the last tune she sang. It brought it all back to him; the bare, desolate room, the wasted form on the bed, the dear, loving hand which had stroked his face so gently, and the sweet voice had sung that very tune to him. He could hear her, even now: "Home, sweet home, there's no place like home; there's no place like home." How sweetly she had sung it!—he remembered it so well. And he remembered what she had said to him just afterwards,—
"I'm going home, Christie—going home—home, sweet home; I'm going home, Christie."
And those were the last words she had said to him.
Since then, life had been very dreary to little Christopher. Life without a mother, it hardly was life to him. He had never been happy since she had died. He had worked very hard, poor little fellow, to earn his bread, for she had told him to do that. But he had often wished he could go to his mother in "Home, sweet Home." And he wished it more than ever this night, as he heard his mother's tune. He waited for it very patiently, whilst old Treffy was playing the other three which came first, but at length some one closed the door, and the noise inside the lodging-room was so great that he could not distinguish the notes of the longed-for tune.
So Christie crept out quietly in the darkness, and closing the door softly, that no one might notice it, he stole gently upstairs. He knelt down by the door and listened. It was very cold, and the wind swept up the staircase, and made little Christie shiver. Yet still he knelt by the door.
At length the organ stopped; he heard the old man putting it down by the wall, and in a few minutes all was still.
Then Christie crept downstairs again, and lay down once more on his hard bench, and he fell asleep, and dreamt of the mother in the far-off land. And he thought he heard her singing, "'Home, sweet Home,' I'm home now, Christie; I'm home now, and there's no place like home."