There was a rattle of stops, a tentative chord or
two and then a few notes of this or that melody, as if the player,
albeit a musician, found himself continually thwarted by the
darkness and the absence of any printed notes.
"Who is up there, Weldon?" Carew asked, as he peered up into the
dimness.
"Shut up; can't you?" Weldon ordered him abruptly.
And Carew subsided, just as the unseen organist, apparently
abandoning his more ambitious efforts, with sure touch swept into
the familiar harmonies of the Eventide Hymn, and then, still with
his hymnal in mind, jerked out the dozen stops and set the air
rocking to the steady beat of Onward, Christian Soldiers.
As he listened, Weldon's mind went backward to his last Sunday
evening in the cathedral at home. He had known why the old rector
had chosen that time-worn hymn for a recessional; he could still
feel the stir of the congregation as he passed them, still see the
scarlet blot of color made by his own hymnal against his stiffly
starched cotta, still see his mother, erect and pale, staring at him
with a resolute bravery which matched his own. Since then, he had
been inside no church until to-day.
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