ficers who met in the vestry of the church after Wednesday night prayer-meetings.
During the summer Dr. Wilcove had given him the key of the playroom in order that he might practise on the big piano, but he had made no use of the privilege, because when he had gone back one afternoon he had been so strangely subdued by the stillness of the house that he had replaced the lid on the piano with a shudder, tiptoed out of the room, locked the door, and walked away without having struck a note. In Halifax he was to receive lessons from a lady to whose name was affixed a string of letters. He would ask her to teach him the Liszt sonata.
It was two weeks before Paul was shown into the presence of this personage. He was impressed by her spectacles and her "English accent." She told him she had a diploma from an academy in London, and he marvelled. Then she placed Schumann's "Merry Peasant" on the piano before him and said: "Can you play that?" He shut the book impatiently and handed it back to her.
"I played that at a concert in Hale's Turning Town Hall when I was six," he said. "I'm twelve now."
"Then will you play me one of your latest pieces," she invited, not as impressed as she might have been, Paul thought.
Something unyielding behind her spectacles made him bristle. He was sure of his ground in the realm of music, for he had been subjected to a rigorous discipline. Aunt Verona had seldom complimented him, but when she had done so she had given minute reasons for her approval. There was one piece, not as difficult as some, but tricky in an unusual way. After he had toiled over it for weeks with Aunt Verona, she had said, "Endlich, mein Kind, hast du es richtig begriffen."
Then she had gone on to tell him, in a rare burst of confidence, that the composer of the piece, whose name
