How it happened he never could tell, but he brought down his
violin with a crash against the piano, then somehow stumbled and
all but fell. In the act of recovering himself, he heard the neck
of his instrument part from the body with a tearing, discordant
cry, like the sound of the ruin of a living world. He stood up,
understanding now, holding in his hand his dead music, and
regarding it with a smile sad as a winter sunset gleaming over a
grave. But Mary darted to him, threw her arms round him, laid her
head on his bosom, and burst into tears. Tenderly he laid his
broken violin on the piano, and, like one receiving a gift
straight from the hand of the Godhead, folded his arms around the
woman--enough, if music itself had been blotted from his
universe! His violin was broken, but his being was made whole!
his treasure taken--type of his self, and a woman given him
instead!
"It's just like him!" he murmured.
He was thinking of him who, when a man was brought him to be
delivered from a poor palsy, forgave him his sins.
CHAPTER LVII.
THE END OF THE BEGINNING.
Joseph Jasper and Mary Marston were married the next summer. Mary
did not leave her shop, nor did Joseph leave his forge. Mary was
proud of her husband, not merely because he was a musician, but
because he was a blacksmith. For, with the true taste of a right
woman, she honored the manhood that could do hard work.
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