Suddenly he turned his head and looked out of the window, across his garden, where a few old-fashioned flowers were blooming sparsely, with much space between them for the rich, soft grass, which seemed to hold the swinging shadows of an elm-tree in a lacy tangle.
"'The warm precincts of the cheerful day,'" he murmured, and then his eyes wandered about the room: the empty, blackened fireplace, where, on a charred log and a heap of gray ashes, a single bar of sunshine had fallen; his fiddle, lying on a heap of manuscript music; the one or two formal portraits of the women of his family; and the large painting of Admiral Denner in red coat and gold lace.

On each one he lingered with a loving, wondering gaze.

"'The place thereof shall know it'"-- he began to say.

"Ah, doctor, it is a wonderful book! How it does know the heart! The soul sees itself there.

'As for man, his days are as grass; as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth.