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There were many changes in the old house pleasantly in keeping with its simple character: airy enlargements now almost completed so that some of the rooms were already finished, and stood, furnished and immaculate, ready for tenancy. In that which had been Roger Tabor's studio sat Ariel, alone.

Nina softened a little, although her voice was still carefully bored and arrogant when she spoke: "Oh, she's the best sort!" It was one of Mrs. Tabor's phrases, Harriet recognized. She moved easily about the room, picking up other handsome, superbly illustrated volumes: "An American Woman in the Sultan's Harem," "A Favourite of Kings." "Does she have my room when she is here?"

The fact was, he was full of happiness at his grandson's return, but he had had so little experience in happiness that he did not know how to express it. He asked a good many questions, and received apathetic answers. "Have you got any notes of the drama?" "No, sir." "Doggone your picter! "'Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song, And let the young lambs bound As to the tabor's sound!"

The "Court" wore a gray beard with which a flock of sparrows might have villaged a grove, and yet, in spite of the vital necessity for watchfulness over this fighting case, IT once needed to be stirred from a trancelike gaze in Miss Tabor's direction and aroused to the realization that It was there to Sit and not to dream.

She repeated this with genuine symptoms of hysteria when she discovered that the Colonel had not come straight from the Tabor house, but had stopped two hours at Peter Bradbury's to "talk it over." One item of his recital, while sufficiently startling to his wife, had a remarkable effect upon his grandson. This was the information that Ariel Tabor's fortune no longer existed.

Once on a blossom-crowned day Of mirth-inspiring May, Silvio, beneath this willow's sober shade, In sullen contemplation laid, Did mock the meadow's flowery pride, Rail'd at the dance and sportive ring; The tabor's call he did deride, And said, it was not Spring.

When in ecstacy sublime Tabor's glorious steep I climb, At the too transporting light Darkness rushes o'er my sight, implies that it is a subject beyond human understanding. Yet it contains many wonderful lessons we all need to know.

He saw the daffodils dancing by the lake, the green linnet dancing among the hazel leaves, and the young lambs bounding, as he says in an unexpected line, "as to the tabor's sound," and his heart danced to the same music, like the heart of a mystic caught up in holy rapture. Here rather than in men did he discover the divine speech.

"I tell you I saw it myself." "Then you're blind," returned his grandson, disrespectfully; "you're blind or else or else " He paused, open-mouthed, a look of wonder struggling its way to expression upon him, gradually conquering every knobby outpost of his countenance. He struck his fat hands together. "Where's Joe Louden?" he asked, sharply. "I want to see him. Did you leave him at Miss Tabor's?"

Tabor's room, adjoining, open cautiously. The ally was creeping back for news of the fray, thought the girl, with a little grin at the thought of the two women's discomfiture. But she sighed again as she entered her own suite to find Nina and Amy complacently dressing themselves for the afternoon's run.