And I made him walk through green forests with the ripple of the brooks in his ears! Listen--like this!" And once more the boy raised the violin to his chin, and once more the music trilled and rippled about the shocked, amazed ears of Simeon Holly and his wife.
For a time neither the man nor the woman could speak.

There was nothing in their humdrum, habit-smoothed tilling of the soil and washing of pots and pans to prepare them for a scene like this--a moonlit barn, a strange dead man, and that dead man's son babbling of brooks and squirrels, and playing jigs on a fiddle for a dirge.

At last, however, Simeon found his voice.
"Boy, boy, stop that!" he thundered.

"Are you mad--clean mad?
Go into the house, I say!" And the boy, dazed but obedient, put up his violin, and followed the woman, who, with tear-blinded eyes, was leading the way down the stairs.
Mrs.Holly was frightened, but she was also strangely moved.

From the long ago the sound of another violin had come to her--a violin, too, played by a boy's hands.