.

A Voice in a Garden.
Crailey came home the next day with a new poem, but no fish.

He lounged up the stairs, late in the afternoon, humming cheerfully to himself, and, dropping his rod in a corner of Tom's office, laid the poem on the desk before his partner, produced a large, newly-replenished flask, opened it, stretched himself comfortably upon a capacious horse-hair sofa, drank a deep draught, chuckled softly, and requested Mr.Vanrevel to set the rhymes to music immediately.
"Try it on your instrument," he said.

"It's a simple verse about nothing but stars, and you can work it out in twenty minutes with the guitar." "It is broken," said Tom, not looking up from his work.
"Broken! When ?" "Last night." "Who broke it ?" "It fell from the table in my room." "How?
Easily mended, isn't it ?" "I think I shall not play it soon again." Crailey swung his long legs off the sofa and abruptly sat upright.
"What's this ?" he asked gravely.
Tom pushed his papers away from him, rose and went to the dusty window that looked to the west, where, at the end of the long street, the sun was setting behind the ruin of charred timbers on the bank of the shining river.
"It seems that I played once too often," he said.
Crailey was thoroughly astonished.

He took a long, affectionate pull at the flask and offered it to his partner.
"No," said Tom, turning to him with a troubled face, "and if I were you, I wouldn't either.