Here was the friend who vexed David Hautville with no problems of character or sex, but filled his simple understanding without appeal.

These chords in which the viol spoke were from the foundations of things, like the spring-time and the harvest and the frosts; they abided eternally through all the vain speculations of life, and sounded above the grave.

No imagination of a great artist had David Hautville, but his music was to him like his woodcraft.

He traced out the chords and the harmonies with the same fervor that he followed the course of a stream or climbed a mountain-path.

A great player was he, although the power of creation was not in him, for he fingered his viol with the ardor of a soul set in its favorite way of all others.