DREAMS AND THEIR SAD INTERRUPTION.

That night Luke Weeks came home full of animation. His pale face had a glow of color in it; his eyes were bright as diamonds beneath their long lashes—bright, and yet full of tender mistiness, as if some great joy were reacting into melancholy.

During the past autumn Luke had been, for the first time in his life, a good deal in the open country. It was spring now, and in the hollows of the rocks he had found some early flowers, delicate as moonlight, which had withered in his hands long before he could bring them home; and this, perhaps, helped to cast that shade of thought on his sensitive face.

The sunset was past its brief gorgeousness when he returned home; so he sat down and thought of the gray rocks, and the oak branches, ruddy with the unfurling of tender red leaves, and maple tassels fringing whole trees with soft beauty, till the whole world seemed an enchanted place to him. He tried to give Rhoda some idea of the pictures which were coming and going in his brain; but she was busy washing the supper-dishes, and could not have comprehended all he felt, had it been ever so eloquently expressed; for she was a brave, practical, industrious little soul, and had nothing in common with the boy but a return of his intense love.

After an hour or so spent in reverie, Luke got his violin from the next room, and began to play. All that he felt, all that he had failed to express in language, came forth now in such strains of music as made even Rhoda pause to listen—listen till tears, seldom found in those bright eyes, flooded them so fast that both hands were scarcely enough to wipe them away. At last she crept to his side, and took hold of his arm.

"Don't," she said, "it makes my heart ache."

Luke laid down his violin with a deep sigh.

"Oh, sister!" he said, "how I wish we could live in the country; one breathes so deep there."

"Do you like it so much, brother?"

"Like it? Like it? Rhoda, I have been in heaven today."

Rhoda was a little shocked; to her heaven was something far away, and most sacred, in which her mother was shrined like a saint; so she fell to washing her dishes again in grave silence, by which she intended to rebuke the boy for his irreverence. But he did not heed this. Those glowing pictures came back upon him and he was lost in them.

Rhoda looked on his beautiful face, so full of thought, so inspired by imagination, and wondered at it exceedingly. Why was it that the boy was often so far away from her, and yet within the reach of her hand? She marveled over this with some sadness, and went on with her work as if she were alone.

The boy was thoughtful, and the girl still busy when Weeks came home from the theatre. Rhoda heard his step on the stairs, and stopped her work to listen, with the breath checked on her lips, and a keen look in her eyes. Luke did not hear the step, but he started up with a faint cry as Weeks came through the door, and instantly covered his face with both hands.

Rhoda called out sharply,

"Father!"

The little man looked at her dreamily, shook his head with a gesture of unutterable rebuke, and clung to the frame-work of the door as if the house had been a ship tossed by some storm.

"Rho—Rhoda; gir—girl, you've been loosening the planks in this floor. It—_it_—it'll be a mercy, a mer—mercy if they don't up, up, and h—hi—hit yer old pa—pat—pater—nal on the forehead. Then, then—where—where would you—you be, Rho—da?"

"Father!" said Rhoda, going close to him and taking the violin from his feet, where it had fallen. "Father, come in and let me shut the door. You are drunk, father, dear, and _she_ knows it. Heaven is not so far off that she will not know it, and cry over it as she used to here."

Weeks looked at the little uplifted face, and waved his hand drearily as he released his hold on the door-frame, and steadied himself on her shoulder.

"Yes, Rhoda, shut the door—shut the door. She might look through and begin to cry again; fright about the loose boards, you—you know. She was al—always so timid. Shut the door, Rhoda. What—what is that? So close by, and crying. Dear me! dear me! You shut the door too late, Rhoda."

Weeks fell into a chair by the table, and saw Luke, as it were, sitting in a fog, with both hands to his face, sobbing piteously. Curving his arms upon the table, his head fell upon them, and he muttered,

"No, no! It isn't her! She has sent the boy—always does—always does send him."

That day a slight, lovely-faced boy, who reminded you of what Edwin Booth must have been as a lad, hovered timidly about the leader's room at the theatre a full hour before he dared go in. At last he ventured forward, pale to the lips, and trembling from head to foot, thus drawing the leader's attention upon him, and a gently uttered question.

"He is sick—my father is sick; and, if you please, sir, I want to take his place just for a night or two?"

"Your father? What, little Weeks? Sick, is he? Sorry for that! What else was it? Some one to fill his place?"

"I, sir—I would so like to play his——That is, sir, I know a good deal about music, and could do it."

"You? Why, boy!"

"Let me try—only let me try!" pleaded Luke, trembling with eagerness, and looking wistfully at a violin that lay on the leader's table.

"Well, well, there can be no harm in that. Take hold, and let us see what you can do."

Luke took up the violin and began; but at first the bow quivered in his hand, and gave out such sweet, tremulous wails, that it seemed like a spirit complaining that some mortal had disturbed it; but genius will always rise strong and free under its master passion. Music made the boy courageous. Directly his frail arm grew firm; his eye brightened; his lips parted sweetly, as if the music came from them, and the leader beat time, unconsciously aroused into keen sympathy with powers greater than his own.

Luke slowly removed the instrument from his shoulder, and looked wistfully at the leader, who gazed at him in turn wonderingly.

"That will do—that will do. It is something wonderful! Strange that your father never mentioned this!"

"But may I come in his place till—till he is better?" asked the boy.

"Come? Of course you may; and I tell you what, my little man, you and I will have a few rehearsals together. You are a long distance ahead of old Weeks' teaching. Come to my house, come to my house; I want to talk with you."

That night Luke occupied his father's stool, and those of the audience who loved music felt that sounds richer and more plaintive than they had ever heard beneath that dome before, had been added to the orchestra. Some of them traced these exquisite strains to the delicate boy whose head was just visible above the orchestra-railing, like one of those cherubs, with deep, spiritual eyes, with which Raphael guards the most celebrated of his Madonnas.

Music is grand, and full of exquisite power; but love is in advance of music, exactly as thought is the master of expression. That night Luke cast his eyes over the audience, in a rest of the music, and saw, occupying a seat not three yards from him, the beautiful young girl who had bought his basket of wild-flowers on the night which he still remembered with a feeling of humiliation. She was looking at him, too, with a bright, intelligent expression. Luke observed from beneath the thick lashes that instantly drooped to his burning cheeks that the girl whispered to her mother, and seemed to be pointing him out with a pleasant smile in her beautiful eyes, as the boy that brought her so many flowers.

During the pauses of the music, the boy had time enough to observe this young lady, whose rare girlish beauty might have fascinated experienced men. How fresh and bright she looked, with that little spring hat poised upon her graceful head, and that one rose, with two or three buds drooping to the dark-brown waves of her rich hair, kindling it up with a crimson glow. No wonder the boy thrilled so many hearts with the solo which the generous leader had given to him that evening, for in that sweet language the boy seemed to breathe out the love which thrilled his own childlike heart, and which would henceforth go hand-in-hand with his genius, like twins entertwining life so completely that they must live or perish together.

That evening Luke never left his stool in the orchestra for a single moment, but sat there entranced, looking upon that bright young face, yet never seeming to look upon it, till the glow in his heart was like the sunshine which gives crimson to the side of a peach in a single day, being itself full of the ripeness and warmth out of which passionate love springs. When the performance was over, he went out with the crowd and followed Eudora at a distance, as she walked home in the soft, spring moonlight with her father and mother. She did not see Luke; and no one was aware of the darkness that fell upon his young heart when the door of her father's house closed upon him.