Parables of a Province | Page 2

grew upon his face,
and stayed for many months. Then there came a change, and he went
into the woods, and began working there in the perfect summer weather;
and the tale went abroad that he was building an organ, so that he might
play for all who came, the music he heard on the Golden Pipes--for
they had ravished his ear since childhood, and now he must know the
wonderful melodies all by heart, they said.
With consummate patience Hepnon dried the wood and fashioned it
into long tuneful tubes, beating out soft metal got from the forge in the
valley to case the lips of them, tanning the leather for the bellows,
stretching it, and exposing all his work to the sun of early morning,
which gave every fibre and valve a rich sweetness, like a sound fruit of
autumn. People also said that he set all the pieces out at sunrise and
sunset that the tone of the Golden Pipes might pass into them, so that

when the organ was built, each part should be saturated with such
melody as it had drawn in, according to its temper and its fibre.
So the building of the organ went on, and a year passed, and then
another, and it was summer again; and soon Hepnon began to build
also-- while yet it was sweet weather--a home for his organ, a tall nest
of cedar added to his father's house. And in it every piece of wood, and
every board had been made ready by his own hands, and set in the sun
and dried slowly to a healthy soundness; and he used no nails of metal,
but wooden pins of the iron-wood or hickory tree, and it was all
polished, and there was no paint or varnish anywhere; and when you
spoke in this nest your voice sounded pure and strong.
At last the time came when, piece by piece, the organ was set up in its
home; and as the days and weeks went by, and autumn drew to winter,
and the music of the Golden Pipes stole down the flumes of snow to
their ardent lover, and spring came with its sap, and small purple
blossoms, and yellow apples of mandrake, and summer stole on
luxurious and dry; the face of Hepnon became thinner and thinner, a
strange deep light shone in his eyes, and all his person seemed to
exhale a kind of glow. He ceased to ride, to climb, to lift weights with
his strong arms, as he had--poor cripple--been once so proud to do. A
delicacy came upon him, and more and more he withdrew himself to
his organ, and to those lofty and lonely places where he could see--and
hear--the Golden Pipes boom softly over the valley.
At last it all was done, even to the fine-carved stool of cedar whereon
he should sit when he played his organ. Never yet had he done more
than sound each note as he made it, trying it, softening it by tender
devices with the wood; but now the hour was come when he should
gather down the soul of the Golden Pipes to his fingers, and give to the
ears of the world the song of the morning stars, the music of Jubal and
his comrades, the affluent melody to which the sons of men, in the first
days, paced the world in time with the thoughts of God. For days he
lived alone in the cedar-house--and who may know what he was doing
dreaming, listening, or praying? Then the word went through the valley
and the hills, that one evening he would play for all who came; and that
day was "Toussaint," or the Feast of All Souls.
So they came both old and young, and they did not enter the house, but
waited outside, upon the mossy rocks, or sat among the trees, and

watched the heavy sun roll down and the Golden Pipes flame in the
light of evening. Far beneath in the valley the water ran lightly on, but
there came no sound from it, none from anywhere; only a general
pervasive murmur quieting to the heart.
Now they heard a note come from the organ--a soft low sound that
seemed to rise out of the good earth and mingle with the vibrant air, the
song of birds, the whisper of trees, and the murmuring water. Then
came another, and another note, then chords, and chords upon these,
and by- and-by, rolling tides of melody, until, as it seemed to the
listeners, the air ached with the incomparable song; and men and
women wept, and children hid their heads in the laps of their mothers,
and young men and maidens dreamed dreams never to be forgotten. For
one short hour the music