What now about all those long days and nights ahead before he might go, violin in hand, to meet his father in that far-away country?
How was he to live those days and nights if nobody wanted him?
How was his violin to speak in a voice that was true and pure and full, and tell of the beautiful world, as his father had said that it must do?
David quite cried aloud at the thought.

Then he thought of something else that his father had said: "Remember this, my boy,--in your violin lie all the things you long for.

You have only to play, and the broad skies of your mountain home will be over you, and the dear friends and comrades of your mountain forests will be all about you." With a quick cry David raised his violin and drew the bow across the strings.
Back on the porch at that moment Mrs.Holly was saying:-- "Of course there's the orphan asylum, or maybe the poorhouse--if they'd take him; but--Simeon," she broke off sharply, "where's that child playing now ?" Simeon listened with intent ears.
"In the barn, I should say." "But he'd gone to bed!" "And he'll go to bed again," asserted Simeon Holly grimly, as he rose to his feet and stalked across the moonlit yard to the barn.
As before, Mrs.Holly followed him, and as before, both involuntarily paused just inside the barn door to listen.

No runs and trills and rollicking bits of melody floated down the stairway to-night.

The notes were long-drawn, and plaintively sweet; and they rose and swelled and died almost into silence while the man and the woman by the door stood listening.
They were back in the long ago--Simeon Holly and his wife--back with a boy of their own who had made those same rafters ring with shouts of laughter, and who, also, had played the violin--though not like this; and the same thought had come to each: "What if, after all, it were John playing all alone in the moonlight!" It had not been the violin, in the end, that had driven John Holly from home.