“I am glad you like music,” said Buell Hampton, as he began to tighten his bow. “Its rhythmic cadences of tone are a language universal. Its power is unseen but felt, captivating and enthralling alike the cultured and the untutored. The harmony of tone enwraps the soul like a mantle. It influences heart and intellect It may depress in saddest tears or elevate to highest ecstasy. Music is the melody of the Gods. It is like an ethereal mist—a soft and dainty distillation of a thousand aromatic perfumes, inspiring and wholesome to the soul as the morning dew is to buds and blossoms.”
As he spoke he had been gently thrumming the strings, and now he placed the violin to his chin. Soft and plaintive melodies alternating with wild and warring airs followed one after the other until the entire room seemed to be quivering with melody. For fully an hour, unconscious of the passing time, the Major entertained his guest, and concluded with a rapid surging theme as if it were a call to battle and for greater achievements.
Grant Jones had not yet arrived. Roderick recovered from the trance into which the music had thrown him. He thanked the Major for the pleasure he had given, then threw a glance at the doorway.
“Where the deuce can he be?” he murmured.
But at the very moment the door opened, and in walked the belated editor.
“Where have you been all this time?” asked Roderick, half petulantly.
“On the porch of course,” replied Grant. “Do you think I was going to interrupt such divine melody?”
Buell Hampton smiled pleasedly while he laid down the violin on the table.
“Well,” he said, “be seated, Grant, my boy. I am going to lose no further time. I have some figures to work on tonight. This is my first night at home, Roderick, for many weeks. Grant already knows the story. Now I shall tell it to you.”
And straightway the Major related how Jim Rankin, Tom Sun, and Boney Earnest had garnered the midnight harvests of gold. Then he drew aside the curtain hanging on the wall, unlocked the stout door which it concealed, and, to Roderick’s amazement, displayed the piled up sacks of golden ore.