The Montgomery advertiser., 1907-03-30
Our Daily Short Story

let me join. your choir at St. Angus
 First vacancy there -is." he assented. heartily. What our congregation likes is a number of sweet, correct voices. By the time some one gets tired of rehearsals or marrics or moves away. I'll have your voice placed and
 be glad to take you .ou."
 And so commenced the musical career of Miss Amy Carter, aged thirty-one,
 residence second-class boarding house; occupation, spending the small
 inheritance which hsd come to her
 suddenly after a life of narrow drud- gery and unrelieved sacrifice. At first her lessons opened and closed with almost monosyliabic conversation, but in time the musician delved be- meath the surface and found the heart
 which for years had almost starved for music. It had been born in her, she thought, but there had been work to do. so heavy that her hands had grown too rough and stiff to play the oid- fashioned organ. There were two invalids to nurse when the choir would have been glad of her services. And so she counted her love as dead and buried until the inheritance had come, and then
 well" she said with a whimsical smile. T thought I'd come to New York and hear the best of music while the money lasted. I would have a taste of real llfe--what I have heard people call the joy of living"
 Weston smiled to himself. She called this seeing lifel And indeed these days, she was quite in flutter
 of excitement all the time. Weston had tickets he could not use for this concert and that Matinees came
 just when~he had pupils, and 1t was a shame to waste the tickets He was tremendously diverted by this delicate. flowerlike woman, who felt that she was indulging in mad orgy of music
 He learned to look forward with keen interest to her comments on the con- certs she attended. Self played SO small a part in her enjoyment. It was always not how she felt but how the music affested the audience And gradually he discovered that she had decided gift of criticism, which was developing under the course of reading
 he prescribed for her.
 Something. he knew, too, that his pupil of thirty-one had not discovered. Under the magic of indulging the one great longing of her lifetime, she was cheating old Father Time, turning pages back and not forward. The faint color was always in. her cheeks these days. and the voice, rising in her birdlike throat, was fresh as a girls. Hitting like a lark's In lowered meadows.
 And watching her development, the tired man began to wonder what had come over him. He saw his work in new light. The weight of drudgery slipped from his shoulders The sense
 of wasted effort yielded to the infec- tious happiness of his bouyant pupil. And so dawned Easter morning over St. Augustine. Outside the doors the mob of sightseers swayed while the regular, parishioners claimed first right to pews Then came the thrush
 of strangers, the organist took his place. Mir. Weston raised his hand and
 the band of white-robed men and women filed into the choir loft Out to the waiting multitude rolled the waves of perfectly balanced harmonies.
 A hundred voices. admirably selected, thought the congregation. and yet to the man who had trained them there came but single voice. Her face was upiifted. her eyes dewy and ten-
 der. as with fluteliks clearness the
 wonderful words reached him above
 the heads of the other singers:
 "rhe stife is Q CT. the battle done; l The victory Of life is won;
 The song of triumph has begun, Alle- lula. Alle1uia."
 To the man 1t comes not as a pean
 of triumph but a message of peace and she had shown him the way! He wanted to tell her how---this
 minutel The service stretched ahead of him interminably
 Alleluia. Alleluias"
 His glance caught and held hers. A lastartIed expression flashed over her
 face. The flute-like tones faltered
 and died away. The absorbed sim gers on either side did not note that heA hand trembled, and her face, pal Ting, turned from the leader to the
 banks of Easter lilies. Perhaps 1t
 was their perfume-something seemed to smother the sound in her throat. Then. as if fascinated, her glance
 travelled back to meet his, and the tender gravity in his steadied her. She raised her book, the color came ! back into her face, and, as her voice floated out to him in the final "Alle-
 Iuia," he knew that his hearts mes
 sage had reached her, and that was her answer.