The Human Chord

was necessary (which he could not decide until, of course, he had heard it), and that the successful applicant must have sufficient courage and imagination to follow a philosophical speculation "where

nd worked faithfully should find compensation by inheriting his own "rather considerable property when the time came." For the rest he aske

The name Skale sounded to him big, yet he somehow pictured to himself an ascetic-faced man of small stature pursuing in solitude some impossible ideal. It all attracted him hugely with its promise of out-of-the-way adventure. In his own phrase it "might lead to something," and the hints about "experiments in sound" set c

rew grammar which he studied diligently all the way to Cardiff, and still carried in his hands when he changed into the local train that carried him laboriously into the desolation

distant in the hills), and still more surprised when a huge figure of a man, hatless, dressed in knickerbockers, and with a large, floating grey beard, strode down the platform as he gave up h

ourse? I am Mr. Skal

He found himself shaking hands-Mr. Skale, rather, shaking his, in a capacious grasp as though it were some small indiarubber ball to be squeezed and flung away. Mr. Skale flung it away, he felt the shock up the whole length of his arm to the shoulder. His first impressions, he declares, he cannot remember-they were too tumultuous-beyond that he liked both smile and voice, the former making him feel at home, the latter filling h

avoidable; for there was nothing of the clergyman about him-bishop, perhaps, or archbishop, but no suggestion of vicar or parish priest. Somewhere, too, in his presentment he felt dimly, even at the first, there was an element of the incongruous, a mee

y with an effect, as already described, of a certain bewilderment, that left no single, dominant impression. What remained with him, perhaps, most vividly, he says, was the quality of the big blue eyes, their luminosity, their far-seeing expression, their kindliness. They were t

with a genial laugh, "to counteract the first impression of this somewhat melancholy and inhospitable scenery." His a

e could possibly keep it up. "We shall get in before dark," explained the other, striding along with ease, "and Mrs. Mawle, my housekeeper, will have tea ready and waiting for us." Spinrobin followed, panting, thinking vaguely of the other employers he had known-philanthropists, bankers, ambitious members of Parliament, and all the rest-commonplace individuals to a man; and then of the immense and towering figu

g of the advertisement, the phrases of the singular correspondence-and wondered. "A remarkable personality," he thought to himself as he stumbled through the dark after the object of his reflections; "simple-yet tremendous! A giant in all sorts of ways probably-" Then his thought hesitated, floundered. There was something

op of the hill, after a four-mile trudge, they rested for the first time, Spinrobin panting and perspiring, trousers tucked up and splashed yellow with mud; Mr. Skale, legs apart, beard flattened by the wind about his throat, and thumbs in the slits of his waistcoat as he looked keenly about him over the darkening landscape. Treeless and desolate hills rose on al