He arose, and Anne followed with curiosity in her eyes, and with her firm little mouth pouted up to a puzzled shape. On reaching the mossy mill-head she found that he had fixed in the keen damp draught which always prevailed over the wheel an Æolian harp of large size. At present the strings were partly covered with a cloth. He lifted it, and the wires began to emit a weird harmony which mingled curiously with the plashing of the wheel.
‘I made it on purpose for you, Miss Garland,’ he said.
She thanked him very warmly, for she had never seen anything like such an instrument before, and it interested her. ‘It was very thoughtful of you to make it,’ she added. ‘How came you to think of such a thing?’
‘O I don’t know exactly,’ he replied, as if he did not care to be questioned on the point. ‘I have never made one in my life till now.’
Every night after this, during the mournful gales of autumn, the strange mixed music of water, wind, and strings met her ear, swelling and sinking with an almost supernatural cadence. The character of the instrument was far enough removed from anything she had hitherto seen of Bob’s hobbies; so that she marvelled pleasantly at the new depths of poetry this contrivance revealed as existent in that young seaman’s nature, and allowed her emotions to flow out yet a little further in the old direction, notwithstanding her late severe resolve to bar them back.
One breezy night, when the mill was kept going into the small hours, and the wind was exactly in the direction of the water-current, the music so mingled with her dreams as to wake her: it seemed to rhythmically set itself to the words, ‘Remember me! think of me!’ She was much impressed; the sounds were almost too touching; and she spoke to Bob the next morning on the subject.
‘How strange it is that you should have thought of fixing that harp where the water gushes!’ she gently observed. ‘It affects me almost painfully at night. You are poetical, Captain Bob. But it is too—too sad!’
‘I will take it away,’ said Captain Bob promptly. ‘It certainly is too sad; I thought so myself. I myself was kept awake by it one night.’
‘How came you to think of making such a peculiar thing?’
‘Well,’ said Bob, ‘it is hardly worth saying why. It is not a good place for such a queer noisy machine; and I’ll take it away.’