THE TICKET OF LEAVE Seated at the schoolroom piano, Piers was thoroughly in his element.

He had a marvellous gift for making music, and his audience listened spell-bound.

His own love for it amounted to a passion, inherited, so it was said, from his Italian grandmother.

He threw his whole soul into the instrument under his hands, and played as one inspired.
Jeanie, from her sofa, drank in the music with shining eyes.

She had never heard anything to compare with it before, and it stirred her to the depths.
It stirred Avery also, but in a different way.